












GopigliffiL- 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT- 
























BIG TOP 


RHYTHMS 



LET US ENJOY FROM WITHINTHEECSTASYOFTHECREATION 
WATCH PLANETS DETACH THEMSELVES FROM SUNS AND FIND 
THEIR ORBITS-AND FEEL THE SWING AND RHYTHMOFTHEMOVEMENT 


FRONTISPIECE 


SEE PAGE S4 





BIG TOP 
RHYTHMS 

A Study in Life and Art 

B V 

IRVING K. l?OND 

Illustrated by the author 



Willett, Clark and Company 
Chicago 1937 New York 





6 \iS/'j 

yss 


Copyright 1937 by 
WILLETT, CLARK fc? COMPANY 


Manufactured in The U.S.A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mas8.-La Porte, Ind. 


APR 11 1938 

©CIA 1 1 5830 




In Memory 

of the beautiful y brave spirit 
that was my wife 






COME ON FOLKS! AND SEE WHAT'S INSIDE 









CONTENTS 


UNDER THE MARQUEE 5 

AS WE STAND UNDER THE MARQUEE IN THE PRESENCE OF EVA¬ 
NESCENT CHARM WE LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD OF BRICK AND 
MORTAR FROM WHICH WE HAVE MOMENTARILY ESCAPED AND 
THRILL TO THE MAGIC OF THE “TOPS.” 

ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 13 

FROM WHAT IS NOW TO BE SEEN ON THIS STAGE ONE MAY GAIN 
SOME NOTION AS TO THE CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF THE LITERA¬ 
TURE OF THE CIRCUS AND MAY FEEL THAT THERE STILL IS ROOM 
FOR A BOOK WHICH SHALL ACCLAIM THOSE RARE AESTHETIC AND 
SPIRITUAL QUALITIES WHICH INHERE IN THE PERFORMANCE BUT 
WHICH SO EASILY MAY BE OVERLOOKED IN THE WONDER AND 
GLAMOR OF THE PHYSICAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. 

IN RING NUMBER ONE 31 

IN THIS RING WE REVIEW CERTAIN ACTIVITIES OF THE CHILD 
WHICH RIGHTLY DIRECTED BECOME ART; EVEN THAT RHYTHMIC 
ART WHICH IN ITS FULLEST MANIFESTATION WE SEE UNDER THE 
BIG TOP. THE DIRECTOR BLOWS HIS WHISTLE AND WE PUT ON 
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TURN WHICH WE HOPE WILL ENLIST THE 
SYMPATHIES OF THE GROWNUPS, FOR EVEN THEY HAVE BEEN 
YOUNG AND “THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH ARE LONG, LONG 
THOUGHTS.” 

ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 53 

HERE RHYTHM REVEALS ITS BEGINNINGS. ITS ART FORM AD¬ 
VANCES ITS STATUS AND IS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE 
CIRCUS; BUT NOT TOO INTENSIVELY AT FIRST. WE COGITATE 
UPON “OLD TIMES” AND ARE ENJOYING A VISIT TO THE BACK YARD 
WHEN ALONG COMES A MAN MADE UP AS A WOMAN AND SETS US 
PHILOSOPHIZING. 

IN RING NUMBER TWO 73 

THERE APPEAR IN THIS RING, AMONG OTHER ATTRACTIONS, A 
JUGGLER, A TEAM OF TUMBLERS OF THE WHITE RACE AND A 
GROUP OF ARABS. UNDERLYING THE ART OF EACH IS A POETICAL 


CONTENTS 


ELEMENT WHICH CHALLENGES OUR ATTENTION. TO COM¬ 
PREHEND FULLY THE PERSONAL AND RACIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 
WHAT WE MAY TERM THE ELEMENT OF POETRY IN MOTION, WE 
SHALL STUDY THE BODILY EXPRESSION OF THE CHILD, THE YOUTH, 

THE MAN AND THE RACE AND RELATE OUR FINDINGS TO WHAT WE 
SEE IN THIS RING. 

ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 105 

PRACTICE IS GOING ON UNDER THE BIG TOP. WE ENTER WITH 
FRIENDS ON THE SHOW AND FIND MUCH TO INTEREST US. A YOUNG 
LADY IS BEING INSTRUCTED IN HORSEMANSHIP, BUT NOT IN THE 
CONTINENTAL MANNER! WE MEET A CONTORTIONIST WHO LEADS 
US TO THE CONCLUSION THAT IN ONE THING, AT LEAST, RELIGION 
AND SCIENCE ARE IN ACCORD. WE WATCH A TROUPE OF TEETER- 
BOARD ARTISTS AND LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT “CONCERTED 
MOVEMENT" AND “PRECISION OF ATTACK." ALSO AS TO A “TACK" 

WE TOUCH ON METHODS OF TRAINING. 

IN RING NUMBER THREE 131 

AFTER A SOCIAL CALL IN THE DRESSING TENT, WE WATCH A TURN 
IN THE AIR, DISCOURSE UPON ITS TECHNIQUE AND SPIRIT, AND 
MAKE COMPARISONS WITH OTHERS OF THE ARTS. WE DISCUSS AN 
APPLICATION OF MATHEMATICS AND FORMULAS TO ACROBATIC 
TURNS. WE WATCH HORSES IN THE RING GOING COUNTER TO; 

OUR PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS OF HOW HORSES SHOULD RUN IN 
VIEW OF OUR INGRAINED AND DEEP-SEATED RACIAL TENDENCIES 
INVOLVING DIRECTION OF MOVEMENT BOTH MENTAL AND 
PHYSICAL. 

ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 161 

UPON THIS STAGE WE WITNESS SOME DELECTABLE AND SOME 
VERY STUPID FAKING AND ARE LED TO COMMENT UPON THE SAME 
AND TO QUESTION THE PROPRIETY OF FAKING AN ACT WITH 
INTENT TO DECEIVE OR OF UTTERING PALPABLY FALSE STATE¬ 
MENTS IN ANNOUNCING TURNS. NOT ONLY IN WORD BUT IN PIC¬ 
TURE HAS THE CIRCUS OFFENDED. ITS ART IS PURE, BUT IN THE 
EXPLOITATION OF THAT ART IT IS POSSIBLE TO ERR, AND NOT 
ALWAYS THROUGH IGNORANCE. 

ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 181 

ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK WE WITNESS A BEWILDERING 
VARIETY OF TURNS. AROUND THE TRACK THE PAGEANT MOVES 
AND THE RACES ARE RUN; ALONG IT THE ARABS GYRATE, CLOWNS 
CAVORT AND GESTICULATE AND HORSES PRANCE, REAR AND 


CONTENTS 


KNEEL. ACROSS THE TRACK THE LEAPERS SPEED TO THE RUN FOR 
THEIR SPRINGBOARD TURNS IN AIR OVER HORSES, BANNERS AND 
ELEPHANTS; AND ACROSS THE TRACK, NOT SO FREE IN MOVE¬ 
MENT, THE “CATS" SLINK THROUGH THE RUNWAYS FROM THEIR 
DENS INTO THE STEEL ARENA AND BACK AGAIN TO THEIR DENS. 
THE HIPPODROME TRACK IS ALIVE WITH LOVELY FORM, FASCI¬ 
NATING MOVEMENT AND SCINTILLATING COLOR. 

IN THE BACK YARD 

TODAY THE SUN IS SHINING IN THE BACK YARD. WE SIT AND 
GOSSIP WITH “KINKERS” AND CLOWNS AND WITNESS HISTORY 
IN THE MAKING AND IN THE UN-MAKING. BEFORE THE SUN SINKS 
INTO THE WEST—TO RISE AGAIN AS WE KNOW—WE SEE THE 
WALLS OF THE COOKHOUSE DROP AND NOTE MOVEMENTS WHICH 
WOULD SEEM TO PRESAGE DEPARTURE. WE HAVE SEEN THE SHOW 
OR THAT PART WHICH, IN OUR PRESENT MOOD, PARTICULARLY 
INTERESTS US; THAT IS, CERTAIN MANIFESTATIONS OF A WONDER¬ 
FUL ART. AS THE TORCHES GLOW WE BID OUR FRIENDS THE 
ARTISTS AU REVO IR. THEY PASS ON TO OTHER FIELDS; THE 
GLORY OF THEIR ART REMAINS WITH US. 


209 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


LET US ENJOY THE ECSTASY OF THE CREATION 

FRONTISPIECE 

COME ON FOLKS! AND SEE WHAT’S INSIDE 

FACING CONTENTS 

TWO EXAMPLES OF AESTHETIC ENDEAVOR 

4 
12 
22 
3o 
36 
41 
52 
6o 
72 
78 
85 
94 
104 
lo9 


YOU MAY HAVE SEEN THESE BUT NEVER THIS 
FOR A WHILE A HIGH BOARD FENCE AVAILED US 
A RIDER IS CHALLENGED BY AN INEBRIATE 
THE IMPRESSION LEFT BY THE “MEAT-MAN” 

THE IMPRESSION LEFT BY THE HIRED MAN 

THE ELEPHANTS LEAD THE PROCESSION 

RHYTHMS IN THE AIR AND ON THE GROUND 

A JUGGLER COMPLICATES THE RHYTHMS 

SOMERSAULTS THREE HIGH 

ARABS IN THE AIR SIDEWISE AND BACKWARDS 

RHYTHMS IN THE MAGIC SQUARE AND IN THE AIR 

A YOUNG GIRL TAKES A LESSON 

OUR FRIEND THE EQUILIBRISTIC CONTORTIONIST 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE TRAMPOLINE ARTIST IN AN INVOLVED TURN 
A RHYTHMIC TIME AND SPACE PATTERN 
THE ORIENTALS RACE CLOCKWISE 
AN ARTIST’S CONCEPTION OF A SOMERSAULT 
AS THE SOMERSAULT REALLY IS TURNED 
A “CATCHING” RHYTHM BUT ONLY IN PICTURES 
WE BEHOLD THE STRANGE AND IMPOSSIBLE 
THE REAL HOLD OF A SANE CATCHER 
THE WALKOVER AND THE ONE-HAND DANCE 
WE SEE THE LEAPERS 
A SOMERSAULTED PASS IN AIR 

THE STUDENT-CIRCUS CLEM IN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

WE HOBNOB WITH THE KINKERS 

THE AUTHOR AT SEVENTY-SIX IN A PLAYFUL MOOD 


115 
12o 
13o 
136 
145 
152 
I 6o 
165 
172 
I 8o 
l9o 
2o2 
2o8 
219 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


AN EXPECTANTTHRONG CROWDSTHE BENCHES 
§ A AND OVERFLOWS ONTO THE STRAW. THE 
DIRECTOR’S WHISTLE SOUNDS, THE TRUMPETS 
BLARE THE CALL TO ATTENTION; THE BAND 
WITH INSPIRING MUSIC LEADS THE SPECTACU¬ 
LAR AND KALEIDOSCOPIC PROCESSION AROUND 
THE TRACK, THE “GLORIOUS PAGEANT” EVER 
CHANGING IN FORM AND COLOR. MAN, 
ANIMAL, BEAST. ALLTHE DENIZENS OFTHE CIRCUS 
JUNGLE ARE THERE, SHOWING OFF, ALL AT THEIR 
BEST. HEARTS THROB. EYES DIM. HANDS CLAP 
AND THROATS SEND FORTH CRIES OF JOY. THEN 
A HUSH! THE SPECTACLE HAS VANISHED 
THROUGH THE STAGE ENTRANCE AND IS LOST 
IN THE MYSTERY OF THE BACK YARD AGAIN 
THE DIRECTOR’S WHISTLE! THE PERFORMANCE 
BEGINS. COME ONE! COME ALL! RELAX AND 
SWAY TO THE VIBRANT RHYTHMS OF THE “TOPS.” 



UNDER THE MARQUEE 



THESETWO EXAMPLES OF MAN’S VENTURE INTO THE FiELD OF 
AESTHETIC ENDEAVOR: CHALIENGETOA STUDY AND A COMPARISON 


4 


SEE PAGE 6 




















































































UNDER THE MARQUEE 


AS WE STAND UNDER THE MARQUEE IN THE 
PRESENCE OF EVANESCENT CHARM WE 
LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD OF BRICK AND 
MORTAR FROM WHICH WE HAVE MOMEN¬ 
TARILY ESCAPED ANDTHRILLTOTHE MAGIC 
OF THE “TOPS.” 


A FEW MOMENTS ago, in my office high up 
in a skyscraper on the avenue, I was bending 
over my draughting board deep in the matter of giv¬ 
ing coherency, a beautified and up-to-the-minute 
coherency, to the elements of a perplexing architec¬ 
tural problem. Now I am standing in the park near 
the front door of the a Greatest Show on Earth.” 
Soon, passing under the marquee and through the 
canvas portal, I shall be in a realm of enchantment 
even, indeed, if I am not now in a realm of enchant¬ 
ment as I stand out here in the sun where my gaze 
falls more intimately upon what I could behold only 
remotely from the vantage point of my office window 
— acres upon acres of canvas which bellies in the 
breezes and, flickering in the sunshine and in the 
shadows of passing clouds, seems instinct with life 
and movement. I could not resist the lure j I left my 

5 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

board, as others have left their beds, and here I am 
upon the lot! The thing is so mysterious, so phan¬ 
tasmal and unreal, springing into being seemingly in 
an instant j and then, after a few days, or even after a 
few hours, vanishing as suddenly to become less and 
less vivid as an image in the mind. So different is it 
in aspect from the neighboring skyscrapers which cast 
their long, heavy shadows athwart the canvas hills 
and valleys in the sloping sun of the late afternoon $ 
skyscrapers wanting the charm of mystery and stand¬ 
ing painfully permanent in their bald and fixed ma¬ 
terialization. These two examples of man’s venture 
into the field of aesthetic endeavor (if the skyscraper 
element can be so classed), standing for the moment 
in such close proximity, induce in me a reflective 
mood and challenge my mind to a study and a com¬ 
parison. 

Not all skyscrapers have in and about them the 
essence of art. No especial emotion to be expressed 
or re-created entered into the beginnings or was 
present at the conclusion of most of them. Yet, 
stolid and uninspiring as they are, they possess one 
attribute absolutely essential to any object which is 
to be characterized as architectural — to any work 
of man’s hand which truly can be called architecture 
— and this is the power to convey the sense of struc¬ 
tural, at least of internal, resistance to the force of 
gravity. 


6 


UNDER THE MARQUEE 


This sense the big top, serenely immobile in the 
calm of the listless air or tugging at its staylines in the 
helter-skelter breeze, fails to convey. It were better 
to say that this sense of structural resistance the big 
top does not convey; for where there exists neither de¬ 
sire nor intention to achieve there is no failure in non¬ 
achievement. We are quite well content, however, 
that the big top is one thing and that architecture is 
another. To us upon this lot where both factors are 
in evidence there is more of charm and grace and 
mystery in the assemblage of tents than in the rows 
of neighboring skyscrapers; and there is more of real 
artistic endeavor and achievement going on under the 
u tops ” than in the neighboring buildings. Here, 
under the cloud of canvas, the life of art is lived, not 
merely simulated or set down by formula in the hope 
that somebody will “ fall for it ” and be fooled by 
certain artistic pretensions. And leaving out of count 
the wonderful acts requiring for their perfect presen¬ 
tation mental balance, physical strength, and stamina 
and moral courage, together with the aesthetic ele¬ 
ments of mystery, grace, charm, rhythm, synchro¬ 
nized movement and coordination, the “ Tourna¬ 
ment,” or “ Spectacle,” for by either it is known on 
the circus (the a processional ” as the ecclesiastic 
might denominate it; the “ pageant ” as costumers 
and producers would dub it), holds more of aesthetic 
and emotional content than all the academic proces- 
7 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

sions of the commencement month combined with a 
year’s clerical cc processionals.” All that these to¬ 
gether would have of advantage would be length, 
tedious length; the advantage of form, of color, of 
rhythm, of movement, of variety, of the participa¬ 
tion of well and thoroughly trained man, beast and 
animal, of charm and mystery lies with the tourna¬ 
ment. I am not unmindful of the element of deep 
pathos in the spectacle of a numberless multitude 
prostrating itself in propitiation of an irate god; or of 
tragedy in the picture of unnumbered graduates go¬ 
ing out into the world to battle and perhaps to over¬ 
come a blind fate. But that is something altogether 
else 5 it is not art no matter how inspiring the music 
or how gaudy or somber the trappings of the partici¬ 
pants. 

The big top is tugging, or at any moment is likely 
to tug, at its moorings. That is one of its charms j 
therein one feels its unity with the life it shelters — 
the deep urge to be up and away, together with the 
restrained exuberance that keeps the artist from los¬ 
ing his head — and with that, life itself! The stay¬ 
lines of the tops are tugging at our very being, and so 
we shall walk with expectant minds and eager feet 
under the marquee and revel in whatever may be set 
forth in rings and upon stages for our delectation. 

So it is evident that I, at least, leaving clients to the 
tender ministration of junior partners, have come 
8 


UNDER THE MARQUEE 


down upon the lot from no mere impulse of idle cu¬ 
riosity but with definite purpose. I am conscious that 
I have a distinct advantage over some of the throng 
with which I enter. I know what I am going to see 
and how to see it. I know why it is as it is and how it 
got that way j and if my neighbors on the benches are 
favorably disposed to my presence and can look and 
listen at one and the same time, I may be tempted to 
impart some of my knowledge, promising, however, 
not to rob the show of any of its glamor — promising 
rather to enhance in a measure the effect of the per¬ 
suasive and compelling rhythms in which we all shall 
find our beings immersed. 


9 







ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 



12 


SEE PAGE 17 











ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


FROM WHAT IS NOW TO BE SEEN ON THIS 
STAGE ONE MAY GAIN SOME NOTION AS TO 
THE CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF THE 
LITERATURE OF THE CIRCUS AND MAY FEEL 
THAT THERE STILL IS ROOM FOR A BOOK 
WHICH SHALL ACCLAIM THOSE RARE AES¬ 
THETIC AND SPIRITUAL QUALITIES WHICH 
INHERE IN THE PERFORMANCE BUT WHICH 
SO EASILY MAY BE OVERLOOKED IN THE 
WONDER AND GLAMOR OF THE PHYSICAL 


ACCOMPLISHMENT. 



OLUMES and essays dealing with various as- 


V pects and phases of that universally appealing 
phenomenon, the circus, are flowing from the presses 
at home and abroad. This literature made its ap¬ 
pearance scatteringly over a period of years ; and the 
first quarter of the present century was well on the 
wane when articles and books about the circus began 
to appear in such numbers as to challenge the atten¬ 
tion of the general reading public. Now, as the 
second quarter of the century looms large, scarcely 
a week, and never a month, passes without seeing, in 
at least one popular periodical or in one of the more 
conservative magazines, an essay dealing with some 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

phase of circus life and activity. This situation seems 
likely to continue indefinitely 3 while books treating 
these various phases at greater length or in story 
form or in the mold of the novel flow in a steady 
stream from the binder’s bench. 

There must be some valid reason for this very per¬ 
sistent literary activity 3 some reason which must find 
its root deep in the appeal of the circus itself. To be 
sure, this literature deals for the greater part with 
personalities, with dangers, with hardships, with en¬ 
counters. Much of it is set forth fantastically or 
with so-called circus exaggeration 3 much of it is 
truthfully presented. Some of the material is in¬ 
teresting; much of it deals with the altogether ob¬ 
vious. Page on page, chapter on chapter, are filled 
with stories of elephants. The writers are very par¬ 
tial to elephants and propagandize for peanuts, be¬ 
cause for every peanut an elephant eats, a penny, at 
least, goes into the pockets of the writers. Why then 
should not others than children worship the ele¬ 
phant! But undoubtedly this literature has such a 
general appeal, whether dealing with elephants or 
men, because it brings into the humdrum, craving 
and unsatisfied everyday life of humanity a shade of 
mystery, a gleam of romance, permitting thus a vi¬ 
carious participation in the unknown and unusual. It 
is not that a man, reading, should say, u There, but 
for the grace of God, goes John Bunyan ”3 rather 
H 


ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


that, reading, he should feel that deep down within 
him moves some power, lies some potentiality the 
fulfillment and development of which inauspicious 
stars have denied him. Because this deep conscious¬ 
ness exists, another book, with a different point of 
view and animated by a different purpose, is launched 
upon that literary tide which is surging and swirling 
around that vital institution, the circus. To be quite 
frank, it is because of my feeling that the treatment 
which heretofore has been accorded the circus in 
literature has been in greater part extrinsic, touching 
mainly the things which float upon the surface instead 
of diving beneath and penetrating to the heart of the 
matter, that this record of a sympathetic incursion 
into the intrinsic, into the essentially spiritual phases, 
is presented to the circus-loving public; presented 
in a sincere hope that it may help to broaden the gen¬ 
eral vision and that through it even the individual 
circus-lover himself may gain a clearer insight into 
the aesthetic component of the wonderful institution 
upon which he lavishes his affection. I use the term 
w spiritual ” in this connection knowing well its 
vagueness and triteness but finding no other single 
word for that internal creative energy which directs 
the mind and will in the control of the physical body 
and of things material. 

I have read much of this contemporary circus liter¬ 
ature ; and I have read with not entire satisfaction 
15 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

because of a feeling that the reader was not being 
given the best of the feast. He has been invited to 
sit in (for a consideration) and then given but slight 
consideration. The best of the viands have not been 
served, have not been fetched up from the larder. 
I have sometimes doubted whether the purveyor 
knew what was in the larder, or even that there was 
a larder. I know that some of the muffins, set before 
the reader as hot and fresh from the cookhouse, are 
stuffed with sawdust; and not ring sawdust at that. 
Would not justifiable cause for complaint seem to 
exist when a literary magazine, which for seventy- 
five years had served in its pages the cream, or, per¬ 
haps, the icecream, of contemporaneous thought, sets 
before its readers the sort of circus dish it did some 
little time since? The article dealt, in extenso y with 
the unthinkable antics of a newspaper man who had 
been permitted by a complacent management to dis¬ 
port himself in clown’s garb in a circus arena. 

Imagine, dear reader, if you can, two clowns cut¬ 
ting into the center ring when Leitzel was still with 
us and playing tag around her as she was about to 
climb to her work aloft; and imagine these clowns 
later running under Con Colleano’s wire as he was 
balancing himself for the forward somersault; and, 
again, doing a knockabout turn on the track while 
the Roman chariot races were being run, dodging in 
16 


ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


and out among the horses and wheels while no other 
human beings were upon or permitted upon the 
course. Imagine this sort of thing going on without 
rhyme or reason and without cessation for two hectic 
hours and you will have a mental picture of what this 
fantastic writer sets before a supposedly intelligent, 
even, as the publisher would like to believe, sophisti¬ 
cated, body of readers. He may protest that he was 
only fooling. We respond that he could fool only 
nitwits, and wonder what pleasure or satisfaction 
there can be in that. Such writing is, to say the least, 
distasteful to readers who are familiar with the circus 
and know that orderliness reigns in all its branches 
and that strict decorum is maintained throughout the 
performance. 

A recent painting shows an aerialist falling because 
of a broken rope. Beneath him in one ring elephants 
are working; in another a premiere equestrienne is 
riding; round about are cavorting clowns and balanc¬ 
ing acts! This is quite of a piece with the literary 
hodgepodge just noted. Later the magazine tried 
to make amends by printing in its pages two articles 
written by a performer who had become incapaci¬ 
tated for further ring activity through an accident 
which occurred beyond the confines of the lot. The 
first of these papers exhaled a real circus aroma; the 
second was a travel sketch recounting adventures 
17 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

which might have befallen members of a carnival 
company or of a minstrel troupe in similar surround¬ 
ings. These papers are interesting in that they dem¬ 
onstrate that a circus performer need not necessarily 
be inarticulate. Not a few articles in the popular 
prints have been cast in the form of interviews or as 
the story of such-and-such told to (and by) so- 
and-so. This roundabout form of self-expression is 
not infrequently found in books. Its employment 
involves the notion that the performer in question, or 
the cook, the animal trainer, the business executive, 
or the whosoever, is inarticulate and devoid of power 
of expression outside his own milieu j except, that is, 
as he may be able to speak through the mouth of an¬ 
other. From the inconsistencies so frequently ap¬ 
pearing in writings based on this hypothesis it would 
seem that the mouthpiece is not always attuned to its 
job. It is likely to let its own contraption be vocal 
and audible, to the distinct confusion of the original 
thought. A simple, even halting, statement of a fact 
by one appreciative of its bearings is of greater import 
and generally of greater interest than is a bungled 
interpretation set forth in graceful terms by one who 
has no conception of the basic implication. 

But, really, how is a writer to convey to the reader 
any sort of conception of the elusive factors which 
enter into even a simple circus act? He can describe 
18 


ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


the obvious fact and show perhaps how facts are re¬ 
lated to one another j but can he create in the mind 
of the reader the sentiment or emotion induced in 
the spectator by the act itself? The emotion engen¬ 
dered by an act cannot be created or re-created by 
words 3 but words in the mouth of one who has deeply 
felt the emotional content may enlarge in the mind 
of a sentient hearer the capacity for getting the most 
out of the act when he sees it; or the words may recall 
the emotions which welled up in the hearer when 
long ago he was in the presence of creative forces in 
action. We may almost set it down as axiomatic that 
any turn in a circus performance to be thoroughly en¬ 
joyed must be sensed emotionally by a body per¬ 
fectly attuned to the spirit of the performer. Unless 
this emotional entente exists the spectator can have 
no real comprehension or appreciation of the act. 
Every act seen upon the stage of the theater, and 
every word there spoken, is associated in the mind of 
the auditor with some word or concrete act contribu¬ 
tory to the experiences of his daily life. Not so with 
the acrobatic turn; that lies in the field of the abstract, 
and only an emotional experience in that field can 
make it concrete in the mind of the spectator. It is a 
subjective field which, I grant, is difficult to enter. 
So the writers, if they sense anything, sense the diffi¬ 
culty, follow the line of least resistance and confine 
19 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

their efforts to weaving words around people and 
things; and people are the easiest things in the world 
to write about — to magnify, distort and belittle. 

The sympathetic writer, however, can say, and say 
with conviction, that a certain action induces a cer¬ 
tain mental and spiritual state, and he then must de¬ 
pend upon the primal instincts resident in the body of 
his reader to react and register the response. We 
readers have within us the will to fly, handed down 
to us through eons of time from progenitors who joy¬ 
ously cleaved the air. We have within us the ability, 
in flexing the body, to change our course, handed 
down by progenitors who reveled in twistings and 
turnings in the vasty deep. We have the will to 
speed, bequeathed to us by progenitors who found 
pleasure in pursuit or safety in escape — joy in either 
case! We have within us the will to exert power; the 
ability to relax; the desire to be courageous, to love; 
the will to achieve order and harmony and unity be¬ 
tween thought and act; the will to comprehend and 
express the sense of beauty engendered in us by the 
cumulative experience of countless ages. We are 
well equipped to enjoy, even to achieve, the art of 
controlling the body; how shall we use the equip¬ 
ment? In the first place, let us not close our nostrils, 
but inhale freely the fragrance of the rose. Let us 
not tighten our lips and clamp our jaws, but taste 
and enjoy the flavor of the luscious fruit. Let us 
20 


ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


harden not our hearts, but bathe in the cooling pools 
at the fountain of love; for love is all-inclusive and 
encompasses the things of the spirit, of the mind, of 
the body. 

So, dear reader, let not wonder and admiration, or 
even awe, be suppressed or dormant if you would 
really enjoy the art of the acrobat and revel in the 
poetry of his motion. Feel how wonderful it would 
be if you were doing the marvelous thing and realize 
that it is just as wonderful that he is doing it. The 
only real difference between you lies in this: that 
while you yourself have been content to remain un¬ 
responsive to the call of life, he has been eager and 
glad to make his body the instrument in and through 
which the primal and pulsating cosmic forces may 
play. As with the circus act so with the printed word: 
if you are to get the best out of it you must bring to it 
a background of emotion and experience. 

The increasing display of interest in the life and 
trappings of the circus is not confined to writers and 
readers but is challenging the pictorial and dramatic 
genius of painter, etcher and illustrator. While 
Dame Laura Knight forced her way into the British 
Royal Academy by her powerful portrayal of circus 
scenes and characters 5 while Beal, Shinn, Glackens, 
Krawiec and others, here in America, paint colorful, 
picturesque and sometimes truthful representations 
of what the circus may reveal to the eye, yet the 
21 



f 

FOR A while the narrow top of a high board 

FENCE AVAILED US. BUT THIS SOON BECAMETOO EASY 


22 


SEE PAGE 37 











ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


painter and etcher can disclose to the mind and to the 
emotions even less of the fundamental art of the cir¬ 
cus than can the writer. As for the illustrator, except 
when he uses the camera, his powers of observation 
seem so diminished that it is difficult in some cases to 
believe that he ever was under a spread of circus 
canvas! 

The fairly recent publication in de luxe form of a 
sentimental story of a peanut vender beaten, in three 
weeks, into equestrianism, furnishes a case in point. 
Having heard the book praised by certain ones to 
whose eyes it had brought tears, and realizing that I 
had remained dry-eyed emotionally over a consid¬ 
erable period of time, I read the book and found it 
to be neither a circus book nor a portrayal of circus 
life, but rather a sentimental Sunday school tract 
written, at so much per, as a warning to boys who 
might be entertaining the idea of running away from 
a place called “ home.” The story did not move me; 
but I nearly wept at the illustrations, the virtue of 
which the publishers had extolled in terms almost of 
circus ballyhoo! Not one color there was where and 
as described in the text. And the tents! These were 
“ A ” tents, such as bordered the field of a medieval 
tourney, from which one would expect to see emerg¬ 
ing knights and squires arrayed for the tilt. And in¬ 
side the tent! — a large square center pole set in a 
large square sand box! Although the action of the 
23 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

story takes place not later than the early seventies or, 
perhaps, the late sixties, a speeding clown on a safety 
bicycle — yes, dear reader, a safety bicycle — accom¬ 
panies the young equestrians who are shown riding 
across rather than around the ring, the latter course 
being indicated by the caption. After all, why not 
let the imagination of writer and illustrator have 
full sway? They amuse the children, while the 
grownups seemingly hold consistency and truth in 
slight regard. 

Certain of the novelists in this particular field 
have yet to learn the difference between a circus and 
a carnival, for in setting the scene they frequently 
confuse the two. The European novelist, used seem¬ 
ingly only to the permanent circus, falls into amusing 
error when he transplants his scene and equipment to 
American soil; for he too frequently transports fixed 
scenery, walled dressing rooms and vaulted corri¬ 
dors along with his canvas and sets them up for one 
night stands. Contrary to custom, he always has a 
night stand if occasion necessitates but one perform¬ 
ance per day as is usual in novels. The story writer 
finds it easy to set up in a ring entirely surrounded 
by spectators and upon solid ground a built-up scene 
adaptable only to the most complete and mechani¬ 
cally equipped stage of a permanent theater. And 
again, novelists who are led to set their characters or 
24 


ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


dangle their puppets amid circus surroundings and 
animate them against a supposedly circus background 
often, too often, fail, as does the illustrator, through 
unrestrained imagination on the one hand and limited 
or defective powers of observation on the other. 
Some overstress the rough and brutal side, citing as 
peculiar to the circus evil qualities which were com¬ 
mon to the generation and locality, although en¬ 
hanced, perhaps, by the picturesque and romantic 
atmosphere which envelops the show. The gam¬ 
bling and sharp tricks which, in the minds of the 
novelists, once were concomitants of the circus and 
even now, to them, exist as such, were quite in evi¬ 
dence at county fairs and mass meetings in the early 
days. I myself have witnessed the thing in that 
environment but never have I witnessed it on the cir¬ 
cus lot. However, on the lot my quest was for 
beauty 5 I was not looking for trouble nor hoping and 
expecting to be duped. 

Having, quite inadvertently, brought the county 
fair into the picture, it perhaps were no more than 
right for me to say in its behalf that in the fair, as in 
the circus, the joy of life manifested itself in the 
higher phases; and that, along with the stock, choice 
examples of rustic art also were in evidence. Writers 
on the seamy side of the circus have never a word for 
performers as artists, not being aware, as I have said, 
25 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

that art exists in the circus. But it always has existed, 
even from the very first, for around it and for its ex¬ 
pression the institution has been built up; and that art 
in the early days was far higher in its standards than 
was the art of the people generally in our broad land. 
What examples of art did we see exhibited in the 
round house on the fair ground! Crazy and patch- 
work quilts were always there in abundance, while 
once, holding the place of honor, was a frame con¬ 
taining an elaborate and decorative copy of the Lord’s 
Prayer done in potato bugs. At one time in our his¬ 
tory the circus posters, which were attractive in draw¬ 
ing and color and really did quicken the imagination, 
were about the best in pictorial art the rural districts 
knew, while the art in the ring filled the wells of 
emotion to overflowing. Is it not time the circus 
writer embroidered a little on this theme! 

Times have changed or are changing for the bet¬ 
ter, or so we like to flatter ourselves, and morals and 
manners are changing with them — all of which may 
well account for the present and seemingly bettered 
conditions upon the average circus lot. This change 
for the better is not entirely due, as certain writers 
would have us believe, to the efforts of any one set 
of men or to any one particular organization. I can¬ 
not believe that the five energetic brothers who, 
through concerted action and singleness of purpose, 
achieved such eminence in the circus domain in the 
26 


ON STAGE NUMBER ONE 


first quarter of the century were the goody-goody 
souls their protagonists have painted. They were 
possessed of an ethical sense surely, but they never 
let syrupy morals impede action, nor did syrupy 
morals account for their fine achievement. 

While I do not and shall not ignore the ethical 
phase, it is not my purpose in this book to tell how 
good and pure and virtucJus are the people of the 
circus; nor shall I sentimentalize over them and try 
to make them and their surroundings more romantic 
than they really are. But it is my purpose to speak 
of them as artists and to exalt their art. For my main 
contention is that in the circus, under the big top, 
there is an art manifestation which challenges, in its 
purity and abstraction, expression in any field of art 
endeavor save, possibly, architecture and musical 
composition in their creative aspects. This proposi¬ 
tion I shall hope to elucidate as my theme unfolds. 

It only remains to be said in this presentation upon 
Stage Number One that it is my purpose in the pages 
which follow to discuss the art on its concrete as well 
as its abstract side; and in order to make the matter 
concrete and objective I shall introduce names in 
such manner only as is necessary to visualize and 
make vivid the specific act or turn. For it is as im¬ 
possible to write clearly of the art of the circus with¬ 
out using specific names as it would be to write effec¬ 
tively of the art of painting without the mention of 
27 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


such personalities as Raphael, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, 
Turner, Sargent 5 of sculpture without citing the art 
of Phideas, Angelo, Rodin, St. Gaudens, French 5 
of architecture without mention of Ictinus whose 
work was pure, of Palladio, and even of others whose 
work was not to be emulated except in that it was 
expressive of its age. No name is mentioned in these 
pages for the trivial purpose of writing stories around 
the personality of a a star ” as is done in much of the 
current literature — a condemnation which would 
seem to lie against much of our contemporary so- 
called dramatic criticism. My purpose herein is to 
set forth appreciatively, deeply appreciatively, and 
to proclaim in terms devoid of sentimentality and 
without overstrain of real sentiment, the nature of a 
wonderful art. If, in so doing, I reveal myself as 
sensitive to beauty in its many phases, I shall not 
blush for my weakness, but shall insist that, despite 
certain modernistic notions, the achievement of 
beauty is the principal objective of art, the chief func¬ 
tion of which in itself is to bring joy into life. 


28 


IN RING NUMBER ONE 





f 

IN RING NUMBER ONE A RIDER IS CHALLENGED BY AN INEBRIATE 


SEE PAGE 32' 


30 






































IN RING NUMBER ONE 


IN THIS RING WE REVIEW CERTAIN AC¬ 
TIVITIES OF THE CHILD WHICH RIGHTLY 
DIRECTED BECOME ART; EVEN THAT 
RHYTHMIC ART WHICH IN ITS FULLEST 
MANIFESTATION WE SEE UNDER THE BIG 
TOP. THE DIRECTOR BLOWS HIS WHISTLE 
AND WE PUT ON AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 
TURN WHICH WE HOPE WILL ENLIST THE 
SYMPATHIES OF THE GROWNUPS, FOR EVEN 
THEY HAVE BEEN YOUNG AND “THE 
THOUGHTS OF YOUTH ARE LONG, LONG 


THOUGHTS.' 


MONG THE grownups who peruse these lines 



ilL are some who used, upon a time, and some who 
still continue, to take the youngsters to the circus in 
the fond belief, or at least with the extenuating pro¬ 
testation, that they got or get their real enjoyment in 
the greater enjoyment of the child. Not infre¬ 
quently it has been necessary for at least three adults 
to accompany one infant that its enjoyment might be 
fully appreciated and its reactions duly noted. 
While recognizing and sympathizing with this 
purely altruistic attitude toward the child, I am go¬ 
ing a bit farther in this book and shall indicate quite 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

specifically why the grownup at the circus really, 
though possibly unconsciously, gets certain delectable 
entertainment other than that meted out to him by 
his youthful protege. I shall hope to open a window 
into the past of some to whom the window is now 
closed and the past perhaps forgotten, and to open a 
door through which those who will may enter into 
a fuller enjoyment and comprehension of one of the 
most entrancing arts which daring and imaginative 
man has ever developed. 

I open that window into the past, to those of you 
with a past, that you may again hear the rumble of 
the circus wagon in the dark of the night or in the 
gray of the early dawn 5 that you may again inhale 
the odor — get the smell — of the sawdust ring and 
of the stock and animals; that you may again thrill 
at the grace of some beautiful “ lady rider ” and the 
daring of the a champion ” who, from his precarious 
footing on the backs of his mettlesome team, guides 
the many other swift-flying steeds around the ring. 
Through that window into the past you shall see a 
rider challenged by an inebriated tramp up in the 
benches. When, on a dare, this fellow makes his 
staggering way into the ring, he mounts clumsily to 
the back of a a fiery charger ” which starts off with 
a leap at the crack of the ringmaster’s whip, while the 
breathless spectators look for the instantaneous death 
of the intruder. But he — oh, well, you remember! 

32 


IN RING NUMBER ONE 


— he, divesting himself little by little of his ragged 
and uncouth raiment, stands forth, finally, resplen¬ 
dent as a butterfly emerged from its cocoon or a 
radiant soul from the castoff body — the champion 
of champions — the bareback rider of the show. I 
shall open a door, a mystic door, that you, my reader, 
may enter into a new realm of art — though really 
you will be entering into the realm of an old art, in¬ 
deed, one of the most ancient and respected of the 
arts.* In opening this door I shall point you to an 
understanding and appreciation of an art the spiritual 
qualities of which may have been overlooked in the 
contemplation of what, to most of us, has seemed all 
our lives to be a purely physical demonstration. 
However, before opening that window into memory 
and that door into an entrancing field of art, it may 
be just as well to get a glimpse into the mind of the 
boy and to note certain of his natural and spontaneous 
methods of expressing his conscious as well as his 

* Protagonists of the various arts seem each to be quite con¬ 
cerned as to priority in the matter of his especial branch. Each 
would be first. Architecture must be the mother of the arts! Those 
enigmatical minds which must needs seek in Holy Writ a confirma¬ 
tion of their theories will be convinced by verses 41 and 44 in the 
first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke that tumbling ante¬ 
dated in the individual the arts of music and oratory! If, in addi¬ 
tion to leaping, the babe had cried out “ for joy ” in its mother’s 
womb, that circumstance also would have received mention. Were 
it not that Buddhism, Shintoism, Mohammedanism and others of the 
great religions are so widely represented in their ranks, the tumblers 
might well take Elizabeth as their patron saint. 

33 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

subconscious self, and also the means which he adopts. 
Such a study will interest us not only as a revelation 
of child psychology, but it will reveal to us why the 
lure of the circus is so intense and its appeal to 
the spirit of eternal youth so potent. In touching the 
spirit of youth, the appeal is to that quality in human 
nature from which is distilled the essence of beauty 
which crystallizes itself in art, and above all, and for 
our purpose, that art the fundamentals of which it is 
the province of this book to expound and interpret. 

Although not in the manner in which I shall hope 
to do later, I am certain that I am reviving in some 
of my readers pleasant memories of the past when I 
recall the “ shows ” the boys were wont to give — 
shows for which the barn and haymows were requi¬ 
sitioned while swings and trapezes were slung from 
the rafters and beams. No charge could be made for 
shows given in the open under the old apple tree 
where the branches furnished apparatus and the 
moist turf was soft to “ tumble ” on; but when the 
barn was used an entrance fee could be exacted, and it 
generally was, to the extent of one penny for adults 
and five pins (no bent ones) for the boys and girls, 
though ofttimes the girls were admitted for two 
bright pins, or without price. 

In these shows the natural instincts of the boys 
(and girls too) proclaimed themselves. There were 
boys who never performed but who chose always to 
34 


N RING NUMBER ONE 


sit at the seat of exchange. There were boys who 
became adepts in changing bent pins into straight 
ones. There were boys who preferred to sit with the 
girls and to eat popcorn rather than to risk their 
limbs on the ropes. And there were the boys, the 
artists of the future, who did not care a pin for the 
business, or feasting, or social end so long as they 
might be permitted to do abundantly and, in so far as 
they were capable, to do beautifully. I remember 
that in my earliest boyhood days among some of us 
perfection, though rarely or never attained, was al¬ 
most as high an aim as was accomplishment. Even 
then without conscious knowledge of art, or even of 
the term, we were imbued with its spirit. 

What penalty did some of us pay to make ourselves 
proficient j to give ourselves power to reach perfec¬ 
tion as we saw it! We wanted strength j and we 
worked incessantly at bodily exercises, including 
chopping wood, carrying water and hoeing in the 
garden. We wanted bodily resilience and tenacity j 
and so we stripped our bodies of all raiment and in 
“ the altogether ” climbed trees and swung from 
bough to bough, from tree to tree. We wanted sup¬ 
pleness and flexibility of limb; and so we dug angle- 
worms, put them into bottles or glass jars, and stood 
the jars out in the burning sun. With the far-famed 
“ angleworm oil ” thus produced we anointed our 
bodies (none of us more than once, however) and 
35 





36 


SEE PAGE 44 









IN RING NUMBER ONE 


rolled ourselves up in damp and chilly oilcloth to 
sleep ; which we did, that is, sleep, not at all. But our 
intentions were good. We wanted poise and bal¬ 
ance; and for a while the narrow top of the high 
board fence availed us. But this soon became too 
easy. It was firm and steady and we might just 
about as well have been upon the sidewalk in so far 
as maintaining balance was concerned. So we requi¬ 
sitioned the clothesline and, with a clothes pole in 
either hand, began operations on that. But three 
points of support, even though one was wobbly, did 
not satisfy the conditions of unstable equilibrium, 
that fascinating factor in the delicate equation of bal¬ 
ance; so the clothes poles were abandoned and in 
their place we took up the single balancing pole in 
the form of a long scantling, and soon became mas¬ 
ters of the slack and the semi-tight rope. We could 
walk forward and backward, turn around, lie down 
and get up without touching our balancing pole to 
the ground; so that the strait and narrow path, even 
though a wobbly one, was made attractive to us, 
and heights and depths held no terrors for our boy¬ 
ish minds. 

Will anyone estimate, in this day of psychological 
experiment with mental and physical reactions, what 
these activities were doing to the minds of boys of 
from seven years of age onward? That they were 
quickening and strengthening and steadying in ef- 
37 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

feet I make no doubt. If it were put up to me today 
to develop the best in the physical, mental and spir¬ 
itual life of the child I do not know what better 
means I should employ 3 I do not know what better 
means could be employed than to arrange conditions 
so that these exercises could be the spontaneous, nat¬ 
ural and joyous expression of the boy. 

Now, every father should, at some period of his 
life, have been a boy; and every mother, by the same 
token, should, at some period of her life, have been 
a girl. Then would parents know what it is to be a 
boy or girl. Such knowledge would save, or have 
saved, much distress. No parent should place him¬ 
self or herself in the position of the hen which 
hatched out a brood of ducklings. The consequent 
distress would have been quite unnecessary — 
would, indeed, have been quite impossible — had 
the hen learned to swim while yet a chick, or, bet¬ 
ter yet, had she been born a duck. It were well for 
parents to come to a comprehension of the fact that 
the activities which they deem so rough in the child 
and fraught with physical danger are not the out¬ 
cropping of vanity or of waywardness or reckless¬ 
ness, but rather are a natural outpouring of spirit 
in a legitimate avenue of self-expression. The 
child does not necessarily scale the wall and climb 
to the ridge of the roof in a spirit of daredeviltry or 
bravado nor just to perform a stunt. In general in 
38 


IN RING NUMBER ONE 


so doing he is merely using the means at hand to aid 
him in expressing an innate impulse toward aspira¬ 
tion, the inborn will to ascend. It is a cosmic tend¬ 
ency and something is wrong, something vital and 
elemental is wanting, if this spirit is not present in 
the makeup of the child. Its absence may be ac¬ 
counted for in two ways: through defective heredity 
or through restraint. In either case the spirit must 
be regained if the child is to attain to the full stature 
of manhood or womanhood. 

In a civilization in which proper educational meth¬ 
ods prevail, this spirit which manifests itself in ad¬ 
venturous act will be directed into the orderly chan¬ 
nels of rhythmic expression. In that civilization 
there will be no call for such silly slogans as “ Safety 
First,” or “ Safety or Sorrow.” The eye will in¬ 
stinctively measure the relation between speed and 
distance j the mind will instinctively react to move¬ 
ment ; the woman will instinctively alight from a 
moving vehicle in the proper direction, for her mind 
will be trained to rhythmic analysis of motion and in 
right response to its call. The progress of this phase 
of education will be slower in women than in men; 
for, through some mysterious operation of the mind, 
with the same background of evolution for both men 
and women, most women and a few men exhibit an 
instinctive tendency to “ go wrong ” in matters in¬ 
volving the movement of others as well as of self — 
39 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

to take the wrong side of the walk, to go contrary to 
the natural or conventional movement in walking or 
alighting from a vehicle. This is not a part of our 
particular study, but it may explain why girls in gen¬ 
eral do not compare in accomplishment with boys in 
rhythmic and ordered activities, except possibly in 
ballroom dancing, in which the woman surrenders 
herself to external direction, depending more or less 
upon her partner, the male, for guidance. It is not 
that the female of the species is physically inferior or 
lacking in nerve. The person most to be dreaded 
and, if possible, avoided in a mob or upon a crowded 
thoroughfare is an ill-bred woman of whatever age; 
she is absolutely ruthless in the use of her elbows. 
Only one of her kind would be needed on any pro¬ 
fessional football team to strike terror into the hearts 
of the opposition. So it is not a physical limitation 
which prevents girls generally from engaging in 
those activities which mean so much in the life of the 
boy, but a mental inhibition, due more or less to age¬ 
long custom and restraint. However, eurhythmies, 
schools of expression and of interpretative and acro¬ 
batic dancing, are overcoming that drawback — in¬ 
deed, in specific instances have overcome it to the 
extent that in class exhibitions and on the stage girls 
recently have achieved the forward walk-over som¬ 
ersault with grace and apparent ease — a turn which 
to date I have not seen accomplished by any male. 

40 



4i 


SEE PAGE 45 












BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

While the boy is near the barn, or about the gym¬ 
nasium, fixed apparatus may be employed and will 
serve good purpose. But much of the active life of 
the boy is spent in the open with other boys where 
apparatus is not available. Then tumbling comes 
into play as a super-means of expression. Shoes off, 
hat and coat thrown aside; a springy turf, a clear 
eye and an active brain ; this is all that is needed ex¬ 
cept a steady nerve and a little moral and physical 
courage, if the two kinds of courage can be differen¬ 
tiated. A striking advantage of tumbling as an exer¬ 
cise lies in the fact that one always has his instrument 
with him — as the songbird has his throat, or the 
swift his wings. When at the age of ten or there¬ 
about the boy has succeeded in throwing his body 
into the free air and in effecting a turn which lands 
him upon his feet without the intervention of his 
hands or any external aid, the earth does not seem 
to him the dull, prosaic, stupid thing which it must 
necessarily seem to one of his age, or twice or thrice 
his age, who uses it merely as a stamping ground on 
which to go from one point of vantage to another; 
but every clod appeals to him as feeling the stir of 
might and as being instinct with life. The athlete 
knows the feel of the earth, but it does not call to 
him spiritually as it does to the poet of the heart and 
of the body. The control of the body in tumbling 
begets in the boy a sense of poise, as control of the 
42 


IN RING NUMBER ONE 


apparatus, such as the horizontal bar and trapeze, be¬ 
gets a sense of power. But as I have spoken of these 
activities as instances of self-expression, it were per¬ 
haps better to reverse my statement and say that the 
native mental and spiritual poise in the child finds 
expression in the act of controlling the body as 
in tumbling 5 while mental and spiritual power is 
manifested in the control of the apparatus which 
is employed in the physical act. These activities, as 
indeed all others engaged in by the child, are meas¬ 
ures of self-expression and are adopted by the child 
in the effort to free his spirit and to become himself. 
As such these efforts are to be encouraged and in so 
far as possible should be made integral with our sys¬ 
tem of education. 

And now the director blows his whistle for the 
autobiographical turn. I shall start the performance 
by relating an incident or two which will serve to 
show to how remote an individual and conscious past 
my interest extends, and the stages through which I 
came to my understanding and appreciation of acro¬ 
batics as a fine art and one of the purest and most ab¬ 
stract means of self-expression. 

When I was about four years of age, with my 
brother who was still younger, I watched from the 
vantage point of our front gateposts a circus which 
had pitched its single center-poled tent in full view 
on the common not far from our home. As a drawing 
43 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

card an acrobat in very pink fleshings performed 
upon a rope drawn taut from the top of the center 
pole outside the tent over shears to an anchorage in 
the ground. As a fall upon the yielding canvas 
would be fraught with comparatively little danger, 
the man, for really it was a man, performed with 
great abandon, doing things which to our childish and 
unsophisticated minds no mere man could possibly 
accomplish or even conceive. This object, which to 
our mind’s eye was a marvelous “ superbeing ” (the 
“ superman ” had not yet arrived) was of a color 
which up to that time we had seen only in the prod¬ 
ucts of the meat market, and as it was shaped like a 
man we called it the “ Meat-Man ”; and the mention 
of him today will awaken deep within me the “ long, 
long thoughts.” No mere man, as it seemed to us 
then, could have possessed the grace, daring and agil¬ 
ity of that creature j and as I witness certain perform¬ 
ances nowadays, even in the light of my own experi¬ 
ence, I am inclined to the same opinion concerning 
their authors, though I know now that they are men 
like unto us, or such as we would be were our bodies, 
like theirs, supple and responsive, and in every nerve 
and fiber as u tender to the spirit touch ” as are the 
finger tips of a violin virtuoso. 

Shortly after the apparition of the Meat-Man our 
next-door neighbor’s hired man, who was said to have 
been a on the circus,” gave a performance on a slack 
44 


IN RING NUMBER ONE 


rope slung from opposite sides of a spacious wood 
shed. The impression then made upon me was that, 
throwing one leg over the rope which he engaged in 
the bend of the knee, the man executed with his body 
a series of revolutions, the centrifugal and tangential 
force of which caused any point on the rope to de¬ 
scribe continuously and rapidly a full circle. I know 
now from experience and from conversations with the 
aerialists that the impression was false and that I 
probably beheld the rapid revolutions of a man 
astride or standing in a swing made by his manner of 
grasping the rope. However that may be, these two 
performances, that of the Meat-Man, whom I re¬ 
garded as an abstract being unrelated to human life, 
and that of the hired man, whom I knew to be real 
everyday flesh and blood, inspired me, and in a short 
time I had a trapeze of my own contriving suspended 
over a manure heap from a spar thrust out from the 
roof of our barn; and there, before the age of five, I 
had begun those exercises in the air which eliminated 
all sense of fear of altitudes, if ever any had been 
latent within me, and gave me a self-reliance which 
has contributed to a practical as well as an aesthetic 
advantage. In me was instilled the confidence to 
walk, as I have many a time in supervising construc¬ 
tion, the four or five inch flange of an I-beam two 
hundred feet in the air — with a chance to fall the 
entire distance; or to stand, gesticulating with legs 
45 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

and feet, on my head upon a perch about eighteen 
inches in diameter at the top of a skeleton spire with a 
clear fall of one hundred and fifty feet beneath me, as 
I did some time in my thirteenth year. One who 
later chronicled the story for the press genially added 
the information that “ he [that is I] was generally 
regarded as a harum-scarum and always had his full 
share in hairbreadth escapes.” Looking back on it 
from today I really think that on both counts he was 
right! 

As touching my physical activities, my mother 
thought that my antics, some at least, were u showing 
off ” and I now appreciate that her insight was keen. 
My father thought them dangerous. After a fall 
some time in my late teens — a fall due to a swaying 
frame or a gust of wind or perhaps to a miscalculation 
on my part, though I could not be expected to grant 
that — my father cut down the frame which held my 
double trapeze. I still remember my sensation as 
I passed, head downward, the wide-swinging bar 
which I had missed in my flight, and the quick reali¬ 
zation I had of the necessity for making a half turn in 
the air to save my neck. I made the turn and struck 
the ground in a sitting posture far beyond the mat¬ 
tress } but I experienced at the same time a very pleas¬ 
ing sensation — that feeling of power over self which 
comes from a demonstrated ability to introduce an 
unpremeditated rhythm into a movement in mid-air. 
4 6 


IN RING NUMBER ONE 


I make no apology for including herein a brief ref¬ 
erence to my relations to, and participation in, certain 
of the arts. For I am writing out of knowledge born 
of feeling and experience without which I should be 
able only to theorize and could not speak with con¬ 
viction. When I left high school I was about as well 
prepared to enter the acrobatic profession as I was to 
enter college. I knew and had combined in fair form 
the elements of tumbling; had worked, or played 
rather, on the trapeze, on the horizontal bar and on 
the rings. I had done double somersaults from the 
springboard (and, what is more, I have kept up an 
active participation in acrobatics, especially in tum¬ 
bling and juggling, even to now when I have gone 
nearly a decade beyond the allotted span of threescore 
years and ten). As to other of the arts: I once knew 
something of music and, having a fairly accurate 
sense of time and rhythm, drummed in my college 
orchestra. I have a working acquaintance with mod¬ 
eling clay, brush, pen and pencil. In groping toward 
a means of self-expression I studied the manners and 
methods of the great actors* of my early youth and 
learned many Shakespearean parts, hoping, possibly, 
to be called from the pit, as was the English baker in 
the legend, to substitute should the star become indis¬ 
posed! Edwin Booth was the first actor I ever saw 
in a theater and Hamlet the first play. Booth’s per¬ 
sonality, as projected across the footlights at least, 
47 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

and his eminent success appealed to me. However, 
I was not long in reaching the conclusion that there 
were not many Booths and that, after all, stage life 
was a mimic life and could furnish no permanently 
soul-satisfying outlet to one whose instincts impelled 
toward aesthetic creation in a more subtle even 
though a seemingly more material field. For fifty 
years and more I have been practicing architecture as 
a profession, with results, it is said, not wholly devoid 
of distinction, and during these years I have filled 
many a printed page with dissertations upon art in its 
relation to life. In some of these writings, and in lec¬ 
tures, I have included acrobatics in the realm of the 
fine arts, to the amusement, not to say amazement, of 
the uninitiated, though to the entire satisfaction of 
the elect. Therefore, I have outlined as above cer¬ 
tain of my contacts so that, when I speak in these 
pages of the art of acrobatics in conjunction with these 
other arts and find parallels and institute compari¬ 
sons, my reader may feel that I quite fully realize 
what the practice of these arts involves and that I 
have some background of knowledge and experience 
against which to project my opinions. Whether or 
not the reader agrees with me at every point, I want 
him to regard the opinions expressed as coming from 
within rather than as based on observation and hear¬ 
say merely. I want him to know that when I recite 
my modest experiences in various lines of aesthetic 
48 


IN RING NUMBER ONE 


endeavor and, with these in mind, dwell lovingly and 
at length on the art of the acrobat, I am not ghostwrit¬ 
ing, nor am I just filling space. My deliberate pur¬ 
pose is to challenge the reader, to direct his attention 
to the essential unity of the arts, and to remind him 
that u there are more things in heaven and earth, 
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” or 
in mine, or in all our philosophies combined 5 to re¬ 
mind him that there are, near at hand, worthwhile 
a things,” entrancing realms, still discoverable to 
each and every one of us. 


49 








ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 





5 2 


SEE PAGE 59 




























































ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


HERE RHYTHM REVEALS ITS BEGINNINGS. 
ITS ART FORM ADVANCES ITS STATUS AND 
IS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE CIR¬ 
CUS; BUT NOT TOO INTENSIVELY AT FIRST. 
WE COGITATE UPON “OLD TIMES" AND 
ARE ENJOYING A VISIT TO THE BACK YARD 
WHEN ALONG COMES A MAN MADE UP AS 
A WOMAN AND SETS US PHILOSOPHIZING. 



RT — AS MEASURED by the span of the in- 


JL \. dividual’s life on earth— is long. However, 
as art is purely a human product it can hardly outspan 
in either direction conscious human existence upon 
the planet. It did not antedate the first conscious ex¬ 
pression of self on the part of the first individual con¬ 
sciously to express himself, and it will cease to exist 
as art with the last consciously drawn breath of the 
last specimen of an expiring race. But art, though a 
human product, sends its roots and ramifications so 
far back into the past, into a past so far antedating the 
appearance of the human race upon the earth, that 
it is fair to assume that art will endure while the race 
endures. Whether it does or not it is with us today 
and potent in our individual lives and worthy to be 


53 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

entertained at our spiritual and intellectual board; 
and if so entertained it will bring joy to the hearts of 
its hosts — for that is the supreme function of art, to 
irradiate life with joy. Other factors may be puis¬ 
sant in bringing happiness or in bringing pleasure; 
but art brings j oy both to endeavor and to contem¬ 
plation, and in dimming or extinguishing the flame 
of art one truly would be taking the j oy out of life. 

Let us in imagination penetrate to that remote past 
ere human consciousness had evolved, and let our 
souls sway in the rhythm of the universe. Let us 
enjoy from within the ecstasy of the creation; feel the 
systems detach themselves from the central incandes¬ 
cent mass and swing off into space; watch planets de¬ 
tach themselves from suns and find their orbits; 
watch what has been called chaos become order; 
watch systems coordinate and correlate, and feel the 
swing and the rhythm of the movement; watch the 
emergence of life upon the cooling planets and feel 
the rhythm of its cycles and changes; watch the emer¬ 
gence of mind from swinging, swaying, rhythmic 
masses of moving matter; feel what we call spirit 
issue from this striving and conflict, from this strug¬ 
gle toward coordination and correlation — this spirit 
which recognizes the difference between conflict and 
cooperation, between what is expedient and what is 
suicidal, between what at any particular moment is 
right and what is wrong; a spirit which reacts in joy 
54 


ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


to the perfect coordination of mind and matter, a 
spirit inherent in the force which stirred, which was, 
the central incandescent mass — that mass which 
must have appeared to one on the outside as mere 
chaos but through which we within saw life striving 
to free itself, striving to express itself in terms of law 
and order and rhythm, in terms of the material. It is 
reaction to the spirit which determines the phases of 
art. 

And now having, at least in imagination, sensed 
something of that wonderful background of rhythmic 
movement which, underlying creation, underlies the 
life of the artist, we are almost ready to participate in 
the life lived and the art wrought in those mysterious 
spaces bounded beneath by Mother Earth and above 
by the big top. 

In this day of organization and efficiency not all the 
interest centering about the big top lies in the art en¬ 
acted therein. There is something in the almost 
magical appearance of the tented colony, with its bil¬ 
lows of canvas gleaming in the morning light, upon 
the lot on which the rising sun saw no sign of life, that 
appeals to the imagination of even staid men of af¬ 
fairs. The presence of system, the absolute lack of 
confusion, the capital involved, appeal to captains of 
industry and make the circus an important matter on 
its purely business and administrative side. The 
methodical transportation and housing and feeding 
55 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

of hundreds, even thousands, of men, animals and in¬ 
valuable beasts is in itself an accomplishment of high 
order in the business world, meaning as it does so 
much of foresight, forethought and sustained en¬ 
deavor. But of all that I have no present desire to 
speak j it is the art, and the life lived in its cause, that 
is now uppermost in my mind and even now sending 
its tinglings through the veins and nerves of my body. 
Would that I might impart some of the spirit to my 
readers. 

Let us for the moment be boys again in the old 
environment — only it was not environment when 
we were boys j it was surroundings. It was before the 
days of u railroad shows.” All vehicles were horse- 
drawn and the circus moved from town to town over 
the dusty or muddy country roads. The posters had 
been stuck up for some weeks and we boys had studied 
the contour of the back of “ James Melville the Aus¬ 
tralian Horseman ” as he was pictured gracefully 
poised upon his flying steed. The curve of his back 
entranced us. The pictured lions and tigers and 
rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses — these we took 
for granted, for that was nature and nature in some 
form we saw every day 5 but that pose and the curve 
of that back! That was art! And art, living art, 
was what the eyes of our spirit were longing to see. 

The morning of circus day dawned and we were 
up betimes and out on the Dexter road to see the show 
56 


ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


come in. But first we visited the circus lot and 
watched the lot boss and his satellites, who had ar¬ 
rived upon the scene very early in the morning, stake 
out the tents. They worked with a long tapeline or 
a surveyor’s chain, and having established the site of 
the center pole as a base, they stuck into the ground, 
wherever a stake was to be driven, a slender iron pin 
with an eye formed by a loop in which was tied a strip 
of bright red flannel. And while we were watching 
the lot gang, the wagons, containing first the poles, 
then the stakes, and then the canvas, began to strag¬ 
gle in, and the stake wagons circled the lot, dropping 
stakes of various sizes where they were needed, some¬ 
times one, two, three or more at a single point; 
smaller stakes to hold the supports of the tent walls, 
stouter to stay the great center pole. And then the 
gang of tent men, standing in a circle about the stake, 
got busy with their heavy sledges, the leader striking 
the first blow. Then each of the half dozen men 
struck his blow in turn, the stake being driven home 
with a rhythmic succession of blows which it was a 
pleasure to deliver as it was to watch. Within the 
outer circle a little later were driven stakes to which 
to anchor the secondary or quarter poles so that the 
wind might not lift the big top from its moorings 5 
and last — but not least to the heart of the boy — 
the stakes to which would be made fast the guy lines 
that hold taut and level the frames from which are 
57 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

suspended the flying trapezes, the double trapeze, the 
flying rings and the swinging ropes. 

Having seen the tent stakes well placed, the can¬ 
vas spread and laced, and having, perhaps, seen the 
top elevated, we “ skedaddled ” as fast as our short 
legs would let us out to meet the real show which 
formed on the outskirts of the town and marched 
in triumphal procession through the main thorough¬ 
fares and out to the circus lot. That was the early 
morning routine of the first circuses I remember. 
Later, as the shows became larger and better organ¬ 
ized, the cook’s tent — or, in circus jargon, the 
a cookhouse ” — was the first one struck at night and 
the first one pitched on the new lot in the morning; 
and all the various functionaries of the show came to 
the lot in quick succession, partook of the morning 
meal and went about the customary business of the 
day — whether it was pitching the tents, feeding the 
stock, or tending the animals. When the procession 
started it wended its way out of the tents, through the 
town and back to the lot. 

Years have not robbed me of the sense of pleasure 
more than once experienced in going out to meet the 
show 5 in watching the gathering caravan as it strag¬ 
gled up to the rendezvous at Allen’s creek, where 
horses were watered and wagons washed, and where 
the procession was formed as sleepy acrobats and re¬ 
tainers donned their uniforms, took their places in 
58 


ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


the saddle or on the box, while the musicians slung 
the big drum into its brackets overhanging the back 
of the ornate and heavily gilded bandwagon, and the 
cavalcade started off in the morning sunshine, the 
elephants leading, toward town and the circus lot. 
Somewhere, possibly, though horse-drawn vans are 
giving way to motor trucks, shows still are coming to 
town somewhat after the same manner and boys are 
experiencing the same sensations $ but mostly now the 
hauls are longer and are made by train, and the show, 
if met, has to be met at the railroad yard or, techni¬ 
cally, at the runs. This concentrates interest but takes 
a bit of the glamor and romance out of it all ; for a 
railroad comes from somewhere definitely marked on 
the map, some place to and from which one may buy a 
ticket, while a show coming in over a country road 
comes right out of the land of pure imagination and 
vanishes as mysteriously as it came. 

Let us delay for a moment more our study of acro¬ 
batic performances as embracing an art expression, 
and the attitude of the acrobat toward his art, and 
trace rapidly the development of the circus from the 
one-ringed, one-center-poled affair of our boyhood 
to that with the present monster tent accommodating 
from ten to fifteen thousand spectators and display¬ 
ing its wares, as does this book, in three rings and 
upon four platforms or stages and upon the hippo¬ 
drome track. 


59 



A. DOU BLE SOMERSAULT AND PIROUETTE. . WITH PIROUETTED RETURN 

B. TRIPLE BACK SOMERSAULT- IHTHE AIR- FROM BARTO CATCHER. 

C. DOUBLE AND TWISTER.. SPACED TO SHOW THE INDIVIDUAL TURNS 

D. ROUNDOfT CHAN D3 TOUCH TNE CROUND). FLIP. BACK AND FULL TWISTER. 


6o 


SEE PAGES 86 & 134 




ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


In the days of my early youth society in America 
was more or less puritanical in its outlook on life, and 
art as touching pleasure or entertainment was below 
par. The circus proper was taboo generally, as it is in 
theory among the Methodists today. To attend the 
circus was to sin, as it was to dance, play cards or at¬ 
tend horse races. Of course there soon developed a 
considerable element in society which enjoyed in¬ 
dulging in such sin, as the wide popularity of these 
forms of amusement attested. But the circus, in or¬ 
der to make its appeal general, must needs combine 
with itself an accredited moral feature, such as the 
menagerie. There were menageries like “ Van Am- 
burg’s Great Moral Show,” which traveled without 
circus accompaniment. (Once when I was attending 
an evening performance of this show the tent col¬ 
lapsed in a hurricane. You know that moral qualities 
in man or thing do not necessarily insure him or it 
against the devastating action of the elements!) 

To accommodate the circus and the “ moral ” in¬ 
gredient the tent was arranged to provide for the 
cages along the wall, leaving a space for the public 
between the cages and the back of the tier of benches 
which encircled the ring. This seating arrangement, 
which was that of the one-ring circus, brought the 
audience in close touch with the ring performance, 
made the show more intimate, and made possible 
what was then one of the great attractions, the acro- 
61 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

batic talking clown. Dan Rice, of Dan Rice’s Circus, 
was one of the foremost examples of this type. 
These who loved acrobatics and beautiful horseman¬ 
ship and could ignore the trend of pious opinion got 
full satisfaction in such shows as L. B. Lent’s New 
York Circus, which, when I saw it, had no menagerie 
accompaniment and furnished no street parade. 
There the art was shown in the fullness and purity 
of its abstraction. 

The introduction of a second center pole cleared 
the ring of obstructions and made it possible to hang 
the frame of the flying trapezes, and with that the 
trapeze act began to develop in importance and in 
characteristic beauty. In my early days the ring was 
always plowed and an embankment of earth thrown 
up about it. The surface was raked smooth and 
rolled and a thin layer of tanbark spread upon it. 
This, with a carpet over it, formed a perfect mat for 
the tumblers and ground acrobats, while the footing 
for the horses against the earth embankment was 
much surer and more normal than that furnished by 
the present-day level ring with its more formal bor¬ 
der built up in wooden segments which are clamped 
in place. When the circus shows on a sunbaked city 
lot, or in a great building — which latter it generally 
does at the beginning of the season — it covers the 
entire area of the rings and surrounding track with 
some inches of fresh earth spread with sawdust or fine 
62 


ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


shavings. Thus the performer feels after a fashion 
in touch with Mother Earth, whence come his 
strength and vitality. 

Somehow the morals of the menagerie and the art 
of the circus did not long remain on intimate terms; 
they soon were divorced and each came to dwell in its 
own particular tent, the menagerie taking along with 
itself for company the museum freaks. Then came 
a further stage, a show under three canvases, shelter¬ 
ing respectively the museum, the menagerie and the 
circus. Later the museum idea was generally aban¬ 
doned ; and the side show, holding a concession from 
the main show, took the freaks and their tent and 
charged an extra entrance fee. It is only when the 
show starts the season in a permanent building in 
some large city that the museum is merged with the 
menagerie. On the road they are separate entities. 

What with the enlarging of tents and the corre¬ 
sponding multiplying of attractions, rings and stages 
increased in number so that now the limit seems to 
have been reached. For the benefit of the uninitiated 
I may say that, as nearly as possible, similar per¬ 
formances are going on in the rings, or on the stages, 
simultaneously so that a spectator sees a sample of 
each sort by keeping his eye on one ring and one stage. 
When a principal act is on, attention is directed to it 
and all other acts cease. However, at that, the large 
multi-center-poled tent makes it impossible to view 

63 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

from the ends an act in the center ring; and, as the 
“ big ” acts generally are there or on the neighboring 
stages, this is unfortunate for the spectators on the 
benches. Certain big acts, however, appear twice 
during each performance 5 first on an end stage and 
later, differently costumed, on a center stage toward 
the other end, where the act will be featured. 

With the shows of today, no matter how important 
may be the menagerie feature, the animal tent is in 
reality but the vestibule to the big top, as the circus 
tent proper is called. Lying to one side of the big 
top, and really of more importance to us at this junc¬ 
ture, is the region known to circus lovers as the a back 
yard,” an absorbingly interesting center of circus ac¬ 
tivity in the environs of which we now find ourselves. 
Let us enter, for here we shall get a glimpse of circus 
life which may help us to a clearer understanding of 
the art. 

In order to avoid the throng of curious sightseers 
who crowd the entrance from the outside world, we 
catch the eye of the “ back door ” man, get a nod, and 
slip in quietly where the wall of the back yard meets 
that of the big top. We come upon a bunch of col¬ 
ored canvasmen and attaches (technically known as 
u roughnecks ”) with fists full of money, shooting 
craps. We pass unheeded and the yard opens up be¬ 
fore us. On the right is the “ stage entrance,” as the 
curtained opening in the wall of the big top is known 

64 


ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


out “ in front ” — the “ back door,” the performers 
call it 5 on the left are one or two baggage wagons 
which shield the crap players from sight and sound; 
then two or three small tents, with flies before them, 
sheltering a sitting porch where the occupants receive 
their friends, do fancy work, read and write their let¬ 
ters. The occupants of these small tents, of which 
there are sometimes a half dozen, are star perform¬ 
ers, often with their families. Sometimes the flies 
shelter the openings to wagons which are fitted up 
and furnished as dressing rooms. If the stay is for 
some days these tents are made homelike with the 
lares and penates brought from the Pullmans in 
which the performers, as well as others of the staff, 
live, each in his own individual quarters, while the 
show is on the road, and where most of them sleep 
even during the longer stands. 

Over across the yard is a somewhat larger indi¬ 
vidual dressing tent occupied by the troupe of dwarf 
clowns and storing all their elaborate paraphernalia. 
Next to that is the homelike tent of the “ Leading 
Lady Gymnast of the World,” and if we were to stop 
a moment she would graciously insist, provided we 
track in no mud, that we drop into easy chairs, make 
ourselves comfortable and, if time served, watch the 
procession form for the grand entree. But there is 
much to see and we forego the pleasure of an ex¬ 
tended visit with the fair and altogether charming 

65 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

aerialists and equestriennes and their husbands and 
brothers and fathers and mothers — for the whole 
family is here, all except a few of the older children 
who are off at school or college, if it be early or late in 
the season, but who may be visiting their parents on 
the show if it is vacation time 3 for not all the children 
born of circus parents follow the profession, though 
we shall meet one or two of the fourth generation of 
circus folk as we pass through the yard. We may 
meet other than circus people in the back yard; we 
may meet other visitors whose vision, possibly, is not 
so keenly penetrative as our own. These are profes¬ 
sional writers, painters and photographers all intent 
on gathering material with “ local color,” all with 
minds and eyes fixed upon externals, all oblivious to 
the fundamental spiritual fact for the presentation 
and interpretation of which, alone, these absorbing 
externals exist, all supremely unconscious of the 
u part for which the whole is made.” 

On beyond the individual tents first sighted is the 
doctor’s tent, for he, with his remedies and bandages, 
is not infrequently in demand. Within the yard 
are some fantastic vehicles which will appear in 
the u tournament ” or <c spectacle ” — for by 
either name the opening procession around the 
track is known — and some broken-down or rather 
“ broken-in ” automobiles, and the fire engines and 
patrol wagons which suggest the clown acts. The 
back yard is the nerve center of the circus. In the 
66 


ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


center of the yard, and in proximity to the back door, 
is a wide open space where the spectacle forms. 
Here, to be decked out in readiness for the spectacle, 
are herded the camels and elephants from the menag¬ 
erie top, the elephants headed by that wise old bull 
(all elephants, male or female, are bulls) which 
earlier in the day pushed vans about and helped raise 
the center poles. Here, too, the performers gather 
and the horses stand in readiness for their turns when 
they are led over from the horse tents where the ten- 
derest of care is lavished upon them. Outside the 
yard a crowd of sightseers stands and gapes, some¬ 
times through the rope net wall which a considerate 
management has furnished for it. 

A glance around the yard will disclose an array of 
canvases. The tent for the performing horses, other¬ 
wise the ring stock; the tent for the performing dogs; 
and, too, the tents for the draft horses, the black¬ 
smith, the barber, the officers (these tents are some¬ 
times outside the back yard); and last but not least, 
or perhaps I should say first but not least, the dining 
tent, known, as I have said, as the cookhouse, where 
hundreds of people are served at a meal. Perhaps 
we shall be asked to dine in the cookhouse. If so we 
shall accept and enjoy an added experience. In the 
cookhouse we are inducted into the larger family life 
of the circus and may note the general good fellow¬ 
ship which prevails. The conversation strikes us as 
that of the domestic board rather than of many a club 
67 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

table, for it is clean. Another thing we note with 
pleasure: we are not among competitors, but in a cir¬ 
cle of friends where no j ealousy exists and where each 
takes a kindly interest in the successes and achieve¬ 
ments of his co-workers. This is the atmosphere of 
the cookhouse, of the back yard, and of the big top. 
The performer has in view only the achievement of 
perfection, never the desire to win or overcome. 
This conception of the ideal marks the wide distinc¬ 
tion between acrobatics and athletics, respectively the 
poetry and prose of physical endeavor. 

We note other wagons as we re-focus our gaze 
upon the details of the yard. These nearest are pre¬ 
sided over by the mistress of the wardrobe, and that 
other, just beyond the entrance to the big dressing 
tent — dare I expose the secrets of the charnel house? 
— that other is the dressing room of a man who ap¬ 
pears during his extremely popular act clad in femi¬ 
nine garb and who is presented as a woman. His feet 
really give him away but he doesn’t know it! He 
couldn’t dress with the women, of course, and, so 
strictly are the proprieties observed, he would not be 
allowed to give the impression that a woman was 
leaving or entering the men’s tent. So he retires to 
his wagon fortress, the doors of which are guarded by 
the maid-in-waiting (his wife) who takes his wraps 
at the ringside and daintily restores them to his shoul¬ 
ders when his act is done. 

68 


ON STAGE NUMBER TWO 


The principal bareback act in a large circus other 
than the one we are now visiting is, or was, performed 
by a man masquerading as a woman. His was a 
clever act and he had no need to resort to this means 
of gaining approbation. I can understand that a boy 
might don female raiment as a joke, but I cannot in 
the least comprehend a man’s willingness seriously 
to create and maintain the illusion of being a woman, 
or vice versa. Such a demonstration degrades rather 
than exalts an art. In fact every impersonation, un¬ 
der the big top or behind the footlights, of male or 
female by one of the opposite sex is offensive to good 
taste — that is, an impersonation made with the di¬ 
rect intent to deceive, or an impersonation like that of 
L’Aiglon by the late Madame Bernhardt, in which 
the woman struts about in a male part though the 
audience well knows that a woman is masquerading. 
The only exception is a part like that of Imogen, of 
Viola, or of Rosalind, where the woman, leaving, for 
a purpose known to the audience, her true part, as¬ 
sumes for a time male attire, and then, changing, 
returns to her womanly estate. In such acts the audi¬ 
ence is not deceived nor is it disturbed by incongruous 
contours or vocalization. A male performer who 
makes up in the dressing tent we are about to enter 
appears in the ring in a blond wig and the costume of 
a woman of the ballet. He deceives no one for more 
than a moment at most, and at the conclusion of his 
69 


BIG TOP [RHYTHMS 

turn removes his wig and gives the spectators his own 
sweet, manly smile. We may miss him in the dress¬ 
ing tent, so I shall picture him to you now. 

When Giuseppe Bignoli di Bagonghi and I stand 
erect, side by side, my down-extended fingers will 
scarcely reach the top of his head. Joe Bagonghi or 
simply “ Joe,” as his friends call him “ for short ” to 
correspond with his diminutive stature, is a clever ac¬ 
robat and does a comedy bareback act. Stunted in 
body, he is big in heart and understanding. I wish we 
might meet him that together we might fall under the 
spell of his gentle voice and sweet smile. He has a 
wonderful comedy sense and a well developed sense 
of humor which can include himself. He seeks no 
sympathy, though mine pours out to him; and I think 
he rather sympathizes with that one of us who has ac¬ 
robatic leanings — sympathizes with him because of 
the handicap of size and weight under which he al¬ 
ways has labored and the handicap of age which is 
being laid surely and insidiously upon him. How¬ 
ever, the handicap of age may be laid on Joe Bagon¬ 
ghi himself. I wager he accepts it with gentle philos¬ 
ophy and a smile. 

And now it would seem that we had established a 
background against which we may project quite lu¬ 
minously our intimate study and analysis of the art of 
the circus 5 in fact we may now proceed to get at the 
heart of the matter. 


70 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 



* 

IN FLING NUMBTWO - A JUGGLEK. COMPLlOTE5TfiIR^VTMN5 


72 


SEE PAGE 80 










IN RING NUMBER TWO 


THERE APPEAR IN THIS RING, AMONG 
OTHER ATTRACTIONS, A JUGGLER, A TEAM 
OF TUMBLERS OF THE WHITE RACE AND A 
GROUP OF ARABS. UNDERLYING THE ART 
OF EACH IS A POETICAL ELEMENT WHICH 
CHALLENGES OUR ATTENTION. TO COM¬ 
PREHEND FULLY THE PERSONAL AND 
RACIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF WHAT WE MAY 
TERM THE ELEMENT OF POETRY IN MOTION, 
WE SHALL STUDY THE BODILY EXPRESSION 
OF THE CHILD, THE YOUTH, THE MAN AND 
THE RACE AND RELATE OUR FINDINGS TO 
WHAT WE SEE IN THIS RING. 


I N ITS BROADER sense art is the beautified ex¬ 
pression of life. In a narrower sense art lies in 
the expression of feeling, sentiment, emotion, in 
terms of color, form, sound, movement, severally 
or in combination. Next, art is undertaken primarily 
for the u love of the doing,” and, secondarily and re¬ 
motely, for the effect on others — an effect which, as 
we shall see, will depend upon others as well as upon 
the artist. Not all expression of feeling, sentiment 
or emotion in any one of or all the above terms is nec¬ 
essarily art j the expression must conform to the laws 

73 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

of beauty. Poetry marks the spirit in which a thing 
in conceived 5 art marks the manner of its doing. 

The art which claims our special attention lies in 
the expression of an innate and genuine love for the 
poetry of motion. The first expression of desire or of 
conscious life on the part of newborn babes is through 
motion. A prose expression develops under the nor¬ 
mal conditions of physical growth. Poetry marks an 
emotional and spiritual development and is a mani¬ 
festation of inspiration and design. 

It will clarify the subject to sketch the progress of 
self-expression in terms of motion from the first out- 
reaching of the infant on through the ascending 
forms of sport, and then on beyond to the highest, the 
artistic, expression. The infant lies upon his back 
gesticulating with arms and legs, grasping everything 
in reach with fingers and toes. He now is acquisitive. 
He is consciously alive and expresses that conscious¬ 
ness with body and members equally and simultane¬ 
ously. When he creeps and finally stands and walks 
he is more than merely alive; he is a being with a will 
and with a spirit which glories in a new-found sense of 
self. Now the will asserts itself and the real bodily 
activities begin. First come running, jumping, 
romping, dancing, those movements which respond 
to feelings of joy in exuberance of spirit and rich vi¬ 
tality. Then come rope-skipping, hoop-rolling, 
hockey, bat and ball, croquet, golf and tennis, which 
74 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


introduce another, an intellectual, element: power to 
control some inanimate object and pleasure in direct¬ 
ing its course. To these is added cycling when under¬ 
taken as a means of recreation. Next comes the 
higher sport of horsemanship, adding to that which 
has preceded the exaltation of mind which follows 
conscious ability to control living and moving forces 
more powerful than one’s self. And finally come 
those branches of activity in which the body itself is 
made the instrument and, with or without the em¬ 
ployment of apparatus, is made to perform marvel¬ 
ous feats of skill and endurance — the highest of 
these being (in my estimation) those in which the 
love of beauty rules the play of spirit and in which 
there is added to poetic charm the entrancing knowl¬ 
edge that spirit and body are essentially one, and that 
for the spirit to will is for the body to do. The 
child’s nature has undergone a change. From being 
purely acquisitive he now gives — pours forth — he 
is self-expressive. 

In all of these forms of bodily activity, from the 
lowest to the highest, it is well to note that after the 
child has “ found his legs ” and has ceased to be a 
lumbering colt (although old age, even, does not 
bring this happy state to some children) a prime 
idea is to gain u form ”$ that is, to clothe each motion 
with the characteristic expression of grace and charm 
and that play of feeling which the particular activity 
75 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

demands. It is a low order of mind which is content 
merely with “ getting there.” If form is desirable in 
the lower expression, it will be understood how abso¬ 
lutely essential it is to the higher and artistic manifes¬ 
tations. 

Let us now subdivide the field of activities over 
which we have been glancing and place in one cate¬ 
gory the manifestations of physical prowess known as 
athletics and in another those known as acrobatics. 
Athletics includes running, jumping, golf, tennis, 
and all games and sports in which a victory through 
personal contest is the end sought. In athletics, dis¬ 
tinctly, is the prose of motion. Acrobatics includes 
ground and lofty tumbling, work on the trapeze and 
the wire, the use of certain gymnastic apparatus, jug¬ 
gling, contortion and equilibration, including that 
fascinating stunt, high-stilt-walking, and all other of 
those exhibitions of skill and daring in which victory 
over another is not sought, but each of which is un¬ 
dertaken for the love of the thing itself and for the 
appeal it makes to the sense of beauty in the per¬ 
former. In acrobatics we find in its highest expres¬ 
sion the poetry of motion. 

It would seem that the art which underlies this ex¬ 
pression in motion were worthy of more than a pass¬ 
ing glance, worthy, indeed, of such consideration as 
may be given to other than the great creative arts. 
In this art the feeling for rhythm is as vital as in 
7 6 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


poesy, the sense of time as basic as in music, and to its 
adequate expression it brings, ofttimes, a personal 
courage and daring, a fearlessness, a confidence in a 
power beyond one’s own, and a consideration of 
others which are elements of not one of the decorative 
and imitative arts. In common with these and all 
arts is engendered that elation of mind which follows 
upon the conscious and sustained mastery of great 
technical difficulty. Upon the sensations peculiar to 
and begotten of this art, I shall touch as occasion pre¬ 
sents, never attempting, however, to define, only 
suggesting; for they are as incapable of translation 
into words as is the musical quality of Chopin’s etudes 
or of Mendelssohn’s wordless songs. Movement, 
sound and words have each a distinctive province, 
though music has essayed, unsuccessfully, to invade 
the fields of literature and acrobatics. 

While the element of danger, and so of personal 
daring, enters into many forms of acrobatics, it is my 
present purpose to minimize that phase and speak 
rather of that beauty the achievement of which is the 
chief end and aim. Memory may aid some, while 
imagination must assist others, to a comprehension of 
the subject. Recall to mind the act of some clever 
juggler, some troupe of Indian club throwers, some 
acrobats who do leaps and somersaults from one to 
another, and try for the moment to realize the 
beauty, intricacy and variety of the movement. 

77 



c Turns tothe smoulders of a (who has turned and is in 

READINESS TO RECEIVE HIM-O. BETWEEN THE TURNS OF CAND A.B 
MAS TURNEDTOD(B). B'ANDC TURN SIMULTANEOUS^TOFLOOR 


78 


SEE PAGE 91 









IN RING NUMBER TWO 


Let us now give heed to what is happening in the 
ring. A juggler enters$ we shall watch him closely, 
following the movement of three balls as they pass 
from hand to hand. These three objects are made to 
encircle the body, to weave in and out, between and 
around the limbs, forward and back, up and down, to 
and fro. Note the complications which ensue with 
the introduction of a fourth and then a fifth ball. 
The rhythm is changed and grows in complexity with 
the introduction of each new object. 

The technique of throwing and catching is, in a 
way, relatively simple while all objects are balls, that 
is, balls of equal size and weight and small enough 
for the hand to grasp readily. But take the simplest 
movement with three objects which are dissimilar in 
size, weight and form and note the complexity and 
growing demand on feeling and judgment. Take 
as objects, for example, an egg, a plate and a knife or 
torch. No two of these can be thrown or caught in 
the same manner, but each demands a distinctive 
method and at least two of them must be made to re¬ 
volve in two separate planes at once. The knife or 
torch must be caught always by the handle and never 
by the blade or flaming brand no matter how many 
revolutions the object may make in its course from 
hand to hand; that is, no matter how many revolu¬ 
tions it may make in the direction of the movement or 
in a plane at an angle to that of the greater orbit. It 
79 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

is easy to comprehend that complexity of motion and 
feeling follows the introduction of a fourth, fifth 
and sixth object and that the technique becomes cor¬ 
respondingly difficult. 

But it is not altogether in the involved technique 
or dextrous throwing and catching that the beauty 
lies. Therein, indeed, lies the skill so necessary to 
convincing presentation in any form of art. But the 
real beauty and the poetry lie in the fact that each of 
these objects is moving in a definite and established 
orbit which flows through the performer and which 
bears its definite and established relationship to the 
orbits of each and every other object in the juggler’s 
hands. It is difficult for the spectator to comprehend 
the rhythm of the movement or to follow the inter¬ 
weaving of the orbits and, beyond the marvel of the 
thing, the movement means little more to him than 
could the movements of the stars in the heavens to a 
night watchman with no knowledge of astronomy. 
But the rhythm is there, and without it the paths of 
the objects through the trackless air cannot be main¬ 
tained. And it is no u common time,” but is a per¬ 
meating, sensuous movement, weaving “ through 
all the maze of to and fro,” imparting a feeling such 
as is experienced generally, I believe, in reading rare 
rhythmical verse which, from its very music, inde¬ 
pendent of thought or sense, quickens the pulse and 
8o 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


liberates a welling emotion. Who shall question 
the elation of feeling, the poise of mind, of the man 
who, with body perfectly attuned, can create and 
maintain this rhythm, change it at will, contract and 
expand the interweaving orbits and then bring the 
bodies to rest without a clash and as if they had fallen 
asleep? The body of the careless spectator is more 
tense than that of the artist which stands free and ab¬ 
solutely relaxed, ready, even in action, to receive and 
execute the mandates of the will. 

At the same time the mind of the artist is more 
deeply concentrated than that of the most interested 
observer. We must bear in mind, in watching this 
particular act, as indeed we must in watching each and 
every act which is to come within our purview, that 
however relaxed or however contracted the muscles 
may, on the instant, become in the development of a 
particular figure or pattern, and however free and 
flowing the lines may seem, or in reality may be, the 
performer is no iC musing organist,” nor do a fingers 
wander as they list,” but the directing mind is con¬ 
centrating deeply throughout. Technical difficul¬ 
ties have been overcome in training; false work and 
scaffoldings have been so obliterated or concealed 
that to the careless observer the smooth, simple and 
unified physical demonstration seems to come of it¬ 
self as a matter of course. The spectator rarely 
81 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

senses the underlying spiritual power and concentra¬ 
tion of will so absolutely necessary to sustained en¬ 
deavor and perfected accomplishment. 

In fact, in no consummate work of art, except in 
such materialistic embodiment of the artist’s ideal as 
distinguishes monumental sculpture and architec¬ 
ture, does the scaffolding of underlying technique, 
erected and maintained through intense concentra¬ 
tion, cease to exist. When that scaffolding becomes 
wobbly, effort fails. It is very well for the poet to say 
of art that “ there is toil on the steeps, on the summit 
repose! ” That is how it looks to one on the outside! 
But only the physical scaffold has been removed from 
around the material and builded embodiment — 
which stands serene and self-contained in its perfec¬ 
tion. The artist who dreamed the dream never 
reached the summit upon which his mind could relax. 
When and if he took “ that flattering unction ” to his 
soul, his work fell off, if it did not completely fail. 
If this is so in the case of a solid material embodiment 
of the idea, how much more so is it in the case of the 
evanescent, almost fantastic image which the art un¬ 
der present and particular consideration unfolds be¬ 
fore our mental and spiritual vision. 

The music which accompanied this exhibition of 
the juggler’s art was merely a background and served 
to unify emotional conditions in the spectators and to 
stimulate the nerves of the performer, rather than 
82 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


to follow closely, or at all, the rhythm of his action. 
This latter it could not do in any but the more simple 
movements when but three, or possibly four, similar 
objects are manipulated. When some particularly 
delicate feat is to be attempted the music ceases, that 
nothing may disturb the rhythm that is running in the 
performer’s brain. 

The music has changed, the dreamy quality has 
vanished and a spirited, punctuated character is evi¬ 
dent. The team of tumblers has entered. This team 
is composed of Near-Easterners, Germans, English, 
Americans, all of the white race, all of the Western 
world. I refer to this troupe as a team, for the mem¬ 
bers, in addition to their individual turns, will in¬ 
dulge in concerted team work, a feature of self- 
expression which characterizes none of the Oriental 
groups except the Japanese who, while Orientals in 
aspect, possess an uncanny faculty for imitation 
amounting almost to creation through the exercise 
of which they seem to equal, even to surpass, the ma¬ 
terial accomplishment of the West. 

As the music is dissimilar so the expression in 
this art of tumbling makes a different, though 
equally powerful, appeal to a nature which revels in 
the poetry of motion. The rhythm is not as involved 
as in the expression of the juggler’s art, but the move¬ 
ment abounds in fascinating musical contrasts and in 
smoothly flowing sinuosity which, in effect, is almost 
83 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


intoxicating j not in a deleterious sense, but as a yield¬ 
ing of the spirit and the flesh to the sway of poetical 
motion while the body is caught and held by decisive 
and unerring judgment. As the juggler tosses the 
ball or the knife and with it traces curves in the air, 
so the tumbler, being, like Brahma, the thrower and 
the thrown, tosses his body, touching the earth only 
lightly on the bound with fingers or toes, executing 
the while motions forward and backward, rotary, 
sinuous or twisting, or any or all in combination, with 
his body free in air 5 the whole done in exact accord 
with a preconceived rhythm and as perfectly timed 
as is the finest musical rendition. 

Let us try to imagine for an instant the intensity of 
pleasure in throwing a double or even a single free¬ 
bodied somersault from a springboard. It is not 
now in this ring, but let us try to imagine it! A 
rhythmic run down a steep incline, a sharp impact on 
the board, an arrowlike rise into the air, an utter 
abandonment of self to the intoxicating sway of mo¬ 
tion during the rise and the revolution, then a quick 
call of the judgment, a stretching forth of the feet 
to meet the earth and a springy alighting in an up¬ 
right position. Words cannot impart the sensation 
nor more than sketch the movement. Brief as is the 
period of action, the thing is a fascinating poem 
crowded with changing feelings; and its doing is an 
art, too, for the feeling of each movement, and the 

84 



rr&Vi; O,.... 


THE ARABS-AHICH HESITATING BACK HANDSPRING:! 
-ONE IN A SERIES OF BOUNDING SIDEWISE SOMERSAULTS- 


85 


SEE PAGE 93 










BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

resultant effect of its combination and blending with 
the other movements, is clear in the mind of the per¬ 
former as he makes his start at the top of the incline j 
and he knows when he has taken the first steps in his 
initial run whether he has caught the rhythm which 
is to result in the complete artistic success of his effort. 

One of the simplest combinations in the reper¬ 
toire of the tumbler, and at the same time one of 
the most beautiful of all combinations because the 
movement flows so smoothly and yet is so rich in 
contrasts, is called the “ full round-off,” and consists 
of a “ round-off,” a “ flip,” and a “ back ” flowing 
one into the other without a break in the movement. 
A round-off is similar to the cartwheel, which every 
active boy tries sooner or later, except that the com¬ 
plete wheel is not turned. A forward step is taken j 
the hands, following the line of the movement, touch 
the ground one after the other almost simultane¬ 
ously or in quick succession and, while the body 
makes a half turn or twist, facing opposite to the di¬ 
rection of the movement, the feet are brought over 
with a whipping motion to the ground into position 
for the flip. This latter is a billowy movement, be¬ 
ginning at the toes and running upward throughout 
the length of the body, in which the head and arms 
are thrown backward till the hands touch the ground, 
while the feet, following over in a curve, come to the 
ground with a movement similar to that which com- 
86 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


pleted the round-off; a back somersault completes 
the movement, that is, the body makes a revolution 
backwards in free air and alights in an upright po¬ 
sition. 

I have sketched this combination thus carefully 
because the three movements which comprise it, the 
twisting movement, the billowy motion from feet to 
hands to feet, and the turn in the air from feet to feet, 
are to tumbling what the three primary colors are to 
painting. The combination is, in fact, a beautiful 
arabesque in red, blue and gold. All other move¬ 
ments and combinations are as brighter tints and 
deeper tones of one or more of these three, har¬ 
monized and contrasted. Any one movement can be 
combined with either of the others but the composi¬ 
tion, to be rhythmically complete, must embrace 
them all. This combination, too, has the character¬ 
istics of a satisfying musical composition, and the in¬ 
troduction of other movements can do little more 
than enlarge upon the theme. The action, starting 
in the major, flows through the minor, back again 
into the major and, finishing on the tonic chord, gives 
contrast of tone and a sense of completed melody. 

In tumbling the satisfying sense of completion is 
imparted to any combination only by a clean-cut 
turn in air from feet to feet. The color contrast of 
the modulation is given by the sinuous twist. The 
twisting motion appeals deeply to the acrobat for it 

87 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

changes movement in one plane to movement in an¬ 
other plane normal or inclined to the first and im¬ 
parts a fascinating feeling of moving and being in the 
three dimensions at once. It is the third dimension, 
and the unlimited field it offers for advance and re¬ 
treat as well as for movement in the plane of the 
picture, which gives power and reality to the work of 
the architect and sculptor as against two-dimensional 
movement in one plane and a necessarily pictorial 
presentation of mass or rounded form, which are the 
limitations of the painter, decorator and illuminator. 

But if you wish to gain an impression of power 
hitched up to speed, the god of this modern age, 
watch Maurice Colleano as he varies the movement 
thus: a short sharp run, a round-off, a flip, another 
flip, and a double back somersault in the air to the 
feet. Others have done it but we do not see it often. 
And now this artist is doing the “ criss-cross.” Pace 
off about one hundred feet in a straight line and, 
starting at one end, land up at the other, in the mean¬ 
time having filled the space with some thirty to forty 
flips, twisting flips; fronts, twisting fronts 5 round¬ 
offs, twisting round-offs j backs and twisting backs; 
all done in flowing meter and with no hesitation. 
This is a cc straight-away.” But Maurice is in the 
forty-two foot ring with no opportunity for a 
straight-away and he is tuned up to do his full quota 
of turns. So he goes as far as he can, introduces a 
88 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


twister of some sort, returns upon his tracks, again 
introduces a twister of the same or a different sort, 
repeats at the other end and comes to rest where he 
started — four times across the ring, out and back, 
out and back, without a break in the exquisite 
rhythm j as smoothly done as if some expert reader 
were giving the lines of the choric song in “ The 
Lotus Eaters,” and indeed as musically. Can you or 
I quite comprehend what that exhibition means in 
spiritual and bodily control! And what it would 
mean, to you and me — what it would not mean! — 
with will and spirit attuned, to re-create the cadences 
of the choric song with our bodies! 

Now we shall see some team work, for the Mont¬ 
rose troupe is in the ring. Did you notice how beauti¬ 
fully those men swung up to three high! Let them 
steady themselves and relax while I tell you how I 
happen to know these people. Forty-six years or so 
ago I met her who came to be known as the leading 
citizen of Chicago and considered by many to be the 
greatest woman in the land, the late Jane Addams. 
What made her great was her sympathetic under¬ 
standing of people, her ability to put herself in their 
place and so to help them. She established Hull 
House shortly after my acquaintance with her began. 
My brother, now deceased but living still in his good 
works, and I, became her architectural advisers and 
together we designed the buildings which house the 
89 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

greatest and most influential of social settlements. 
In one of the buildings is a gymnasium where boys of 
the streets and slums are entertained in groups and 
classes and taught the value of exercise and clean liv¬ 
ing. Miss Addams’ sympathies extended to the ac¬ 
robats who needed, and with difficulty could procure, 
spacious quarters in which to rehearse and work up 
their acts between seasons, and she graciously allowed 
the performers to set up their apparatus and use it 
while the gymnasium was not required by the boys, as 
it rarely was in the forenoons.* 

Here I first met the Brothers Majares, wizards 
of the slack wire. The friendly engineer at Hull 
House would tip me off when some particularly fine 
rehearsing was in progress, and I would leave my 
office on some pretext, go over to the West Side and 
slip into the Hull House gymnasium as though on a 
tour of inspection, to see if floors were in good condi¬ 
tion or if radiator valves needed replacing. So it was 
that I came intimately upon the Montrose troupe 
in action. What I witnessed and discussed in re¬ 
hearsal you and I are about to view in the ring. 

The men, three high, are at attention. A signal 

* “ Candor, however, compels me to state that a long acquaint¬ 
ance with the acrobatic folk who have to do with the circus, a 
large number of whom practice in our gymnasium every winter, 
has raised our estimation of that profession.” Jane Addams in 
Twenty Years at Hull House, p. 443. 

90 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


inaudible to us is given and,suddenly we see what ap¬ 
pears to be three somersaults turned simultaneously 
in the air. The topmounter has turned and landed 
on the shoulders of the understander who himself 
has turned and recovered in time to receive the top- 
mounter, the middleman having turned to the shoul¬ 
ders of a fourth, in waiting - y and then the two who are 
now topmounters turn simultaneously to the ground. 
Those three somersaults, however, were not turned 
simultaneously but consecutively on a rising and sub¬ 
siding spiritual or mental wave which had its begin¬ 
nings in the will of the man on top. At the signal the 
body of the middleman stiffens to furnish the top- 
mounter a firm or rising base for his turn, for no som¬ 
ersault can be thrown from a yielding base $ then the 
middleman, freed of the topmounter, relaxing for his 
own turn, sends his message to the understander who 
reacts to the middleman as the middleman has re¬ 
acted to the topmounter. The understander sends 
his message to Mother Earth in whose bosom the 
spiritual wave is dissipated. Only the minutest frac¬ 
tion of a second intervenes between the turns which, 
virtually, are thrown and float upon a swelling and 
subsiding tide of emotion. There is not in this what 
might be called precision of attack such as is required 
in the concerted playing of music and as later will be 
evidenced in the Picchiani turn on Stage Number 
9i 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

Three. It is even a finer demonstration of human 
achievement in concentration, coordination and co¬ 
operation than either a musical performance or that 
acrobatic turn affords. 

What does it mean to men to know that they pos¬ 
sess bodies capable of such perfection of movement 
as that which we have just witnessed, such perfect 
judgment of interrelated time and space? Were I 
one of those men or one such as they, I should know 
that my body was not common clay — a clod — but a 
beautiful sensate instrument, a confluence of complex 
cosmic forces, which should leap and bound and 
swing and sway and swoon at my will, in the play of 
my emotions. And I doubt not, in fact I know, that 
it means quite that to those who own the bodies which 
accomplish these feats. 

The Arabs have entered the ring, and we may ig¬ 
nore the music for it has “ nothing to do with the 
case,” or very little. Perhaps a tom-tom is monoto¬ 
nously sounding somewhere a broken rhythm. That 
would be altogether appropriate. The mind works 
in a flash, and before the Arabs begin their intricate, 
individualistic and thrilling performance let me flash 
a bit of an early mental experience before you. In 
the late sixties or early seventies I witnessed the per¬ 
formance of a troupe of Arabian acrobats who were 
said to be the first or among the first to demonstrate 
the Arabian system in this country. The troupe ap- 
92 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


peared under the auspices of P. T. Barnum’s “ Great¬ 
est Show on Earth.” In due course I had seen the 
leapers and the white-skinned tumblers going 
through the usual line of round-offs, flips, backs, 
fronts, twisters, etc., all movements which I thor¬ 
oughly understood and in some of which I myself 
was fairly proficient. 

Then into the ring came the Arabs, tawny or dark- 
skinned sons of the desert, in flaming burnouses which 
with haughty air they condescended to lay aside for 
a time to appear in loose ill-fitting garments — as it 
then seemed to me — each individually cut, striped 
and colored with no regard to uniformity. When 
they began, as they did, with impetuosity, individu¬ 
ally motivated and in seeming disregard one of an¬ 
other, young, critical and highly superior as I was, 
I felt a distinct shock of disappointment go through 
me. Did Barnum bring these people over here to 
show us something worthwhile, or was it another 
case of buncoing the public? You, dear reader with 
experience, must forgive me, for, as I say, I was 
young, in my early teens, and had my own ideal of 
beauty. I had seen “ brandies ” and “ butterflies ” 
but I had never seen them done like this. I had seen 
flips — but why did these chaps interrupt the 
movement as they did ? They would j ump high into 
the air, hang there for an instant, stretch out their 
hands toward the earth and, bent backward nearly 
93 



PROJECTION OF THE RHYTHMICAL PROJECTION OF THE RHYTHMICAL 
THREE-DIMENSIONAL PATH TRACED BV THREE-DIMENSIONAL PATH TRACED BY 
THE BODY OF THETRAMPOUNt ARTIST THE BODY Of THE FtYINCmPEZE ARTIST 


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PRODUCED BY CONNECTING WITH A MAGIC SQUARE. RESULTING FROM 
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CESSIVE DIGITS OF THE MAGIC SQUARE AND ANGULAR CHANGES IN DIRECTION 


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THE PATTERNS WITHIN THE MAGIC SQUARE ARE. CONDITIONED 
BY TWO-DIMENSIONAL SPACE ALONE* THE PATTERN5 DEVELOPED 
IN THE Al R.- BY TUMBLER, JUGGLER AND AER.1ALIST-ARE. 
CONDITIONED NOT ONLY BY SPACE-THREE-DIMENSIONAL 5 PACE— 
BUT ALSO BY THE INEXORABLE ELEMENT OF TIME. 


94 


SEE PAGE 99 































IN RING NUMBER TWO 


double, would alight on hands and feet, sometimes, 
as it seemed, simultaneously, sometimes the feet pre¬ 
ceding the hands by a fraction of a second and some¬ 
times the hands touching first. Then one hand first 
and then the other! Didn’t they know anything 
about rhythm? Didn’t they feel the rhythmic flow 
of forces through the body? Why didn’t they take 
their art seriously and tumble to the tune of “ Old 
Hundred ” or something staid instead of working to 
“ Pop, Goes the Weasel ” and getting out of time 
at that! They jumped high into the air and threw 
sidewise somersaults like free cartwheels with arms 
and legs widely extended and away off the ground. 
They revolved in air backward, forward or sidewise, 
rolled up like a ball — “ balled-up,” the technical 
term is — and from that position would “ let out ” 
and come to earth with bodies bent severely back¬ 
ward. All was done with immense speed and inten¬ 
sity of feeling! 

I dreamed that night over that exhibition of physi¬ 
cal prowess in which the spiritual, that essential con¬ 
comitant of beauty, seemed wanting. It was many 
days later and after many unsuccessful attempts to 
demonstrate the thing to myself by imitation of the 
movements that I came to the conclusion that Bar- 
num was not fooling us, but that there was something 
in it, something spiritual, racial and inherently beau¬ 
tiful, which because of my inexperience and lack of 
95 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

knowledge I had not been able to grasp or fathom. 

I came to a full realization of the value and charac¬ 
ter of Arabian art as I pursued my architectural 
studies at home and in the lands of the Saracens. 
These troupes of Arabian acrobats are made up of 
Arabs of the desert, Moors of Tangier and Fez with 
now and then a black from the Sudan; but their racial 
characteristics are differentiated only in detail, espe¬ 
cially in the case of the Moors and Arabs. One char¬ 
acteristic is their love of unstable equilibrium demon¬ 
strated in their riding, their tumbling and especially 
in their pyramid building, in the latter exemplified 
by men standing four or five high upon the shoulders 
or backs of those beneath; demonstrated also in their 
architecture and decorative design. The architecture 
of defense alone is stable; but the horseshoe arch at 
the gates demonstrates without question how deeply 
embedded is the racial craving for fantastic move¬ 
ment and precarious balance. 

From what has immediately preceded we may be 
the better able to appreciate certain racial differences 
between the art and character of the Oriental, best 
exemplified in the Arab, and those of the Occidental, 
or men of the Western world. In the decorative arts 
the lines of the West flow symmetrically from a 
parent stem. Whether the composition is symmetri¬ 
cal or asymmetrical there is always maintained a 
spreading base and a balance of parts which keeps the 
96 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


whole firm and solid. This same idea of composition 
determines the form of Western music, which is built 
upon an eight-toned scale, and though admitting of 
and abounding in transitions and modulations, yet 
moves ever with a definite forward flow in the devel¬ 
opment of the theme. And so with the movements 
in Western tumbling; there is a certain sinuosity but, 
in general, the feet and hands touch the ground in a 
measured rhythmic beat, without deviating from the 
preconceived thematic scheme. The music of the 
Arab is based on a chromatic scale and moves in 
broken rhythm following the mood of the individual 
performer, with many a quirk and twist. You have 
noted the same characteristic in Arabian tumbling. 
Where in the West the character of the composition 
is expressed in a long, gradual sweep, in the East it is 
demonstrated in a succession of brilliant chromatic 
runs. These limitations and characterizations apply 
equally to the decorative arts and to the architecture 
of these widely and idealistically divergent branches 
of the human family. 

And now that I have given some little insight into 
the character and idealism of the Arabs, we may 
watch their movement with keener appreciation of 
the underlying poetry. Poetry and mathematics, 
both so necessary to creation and accomplishment in 
all the arts, and especially in acrobatics, lie deep down 
in the character of the Arab. His mathematical 
97 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

sense, his mastery of interwoven geometric patterns 
in his decorative arts, underlie his tumbling, even his 
human pyramid building. You feel the presence if 
your discernment is keen. What I flashed before you 
in a mental picture you have now seen in reality in 
Ring Number Two. 

From what we have witnessed in this ring, though 
but a prelude to that which is to be served for our 
delectation, we may gain an insight into the limita¬ 
tions which circumscribe an acrobatic performance 
whether of jugglers and tumblers or of the aerialists 
whose movements and rhythms we shall study later 
on. Leaving out of count at present the physical 
factors of the equation, let us note the definite, abso¬ 
lute though intangible factors of time and space and 
their necessary interrelationship. The form of the 
action or movement and the quality of the rhythm 
will depend upon the spiritual and mental makeup of 
the performer 5 the completed turn will depend upon 
the manner in which he meets the space and time 
limitations of the problem. How two opposite types 
of mind would react to an identical situation may well 
be perceived in the pattern which they would develop 
within what is known as the magic square, a figure, 
in its simplest form, made up of nine equal squares 
each marked with its own numeral. The sum of the 
numerals added across, up, down or on the main 
diagonals is always fifteen. If a line is drawn from 
98 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


the center of square number one to the center of 
square number two, thence to number three and so on 
to number nine, and the figure closed with a line from 
number nine to number one, there will j-esult an in¬ 
tricate and engaging geometrical pattern. 

If the one who plies the pencil is of a poetic tem¬ 
perament, the lines will flow in rhythmic curves and 
the figure will be mysterious and entrancing; if he 
be prosaic and mechanically minded, the resulting 
figure will be stiff, angular and spiky though equally 
complex. The angularity and complexity are estab¬ 
lished by a preconditioned rectilinear path from 
point to point within the larger area and are unaf¬ 
fected by the mental or spiritual attitude of the indi¬ 
vidual wielding the pencil. The flowing lines, merg¬ 
ing the one into the other, are conditioned by the 
quality and “quantity of choice” resident in the 
mentality and spirituality of the artist. These two 
products of the human mind disclose the difference 
between poetry and so-called art “ moderne.” The 
form limitation in the magic square is one entirely of 
space in one plane. But when the bodies of the acro¬ 
bats are tracing curves in free air the space limitations 
— now three-dimensional space limitations — are 
involved in time limitations as well. If one finds it 
entrancing, as one does, to develop with brush or 
pencil the rhythmic pattern on a plane in the magic 
square or in any form of surface decoration, how 
99 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

much more richly and spiritually rewarded will he be 
in producing in space with his body patterns equally 
or more complicated. The difference between the 
figure in the plane and that in the air is one of the 
static as against the dynamic, one of a mummified as 
against a living art. 

Let us go a bit farther in an analysis of the two pat¬ 
terns shown in the magic square. The mind which 
developed the flowing, poetical, almost lyric pattern 
must have had a clear conception of the factors in¬ 
volved and the end to be attained. Nothing was left 
to chance. When starting from No. i, it must have 
had knowledge not only of the position of No. 2, but 
of No. 3 and of the numbers to follow. That knowl¬ 
edge led to the selection of a path with easy transi¬ 
tions along which movement was graceful and 
pleasing to the senses. Not only this but the path per¬ 
mitted, almost demanded, a continuity of movement 
which in the end would produce a unified figure rich 
in rhythmic variety. The mind which produced the 
pattern composed of straight lines needed only to 
know, when it made its initial move, that there was a 
No. 2 which, having been located, was to be reached 
in the most mechanical manner possible. When or 
how smoothly the course was to be traveled was a 
matter of no moment. No. 3 might be reached from 
No. 2 in the same manner, next day or the next, it 
made no difference. That a pattern resulted at all 
100 


IN RING NUMBER TWO 


was due to the power which had established the posi¬ 
tion of the numerals in the magic square and to no 
volition or apprehension on the part of the puppet 
mind which made the moves. These two types of 
mind are those which produce, the one a poetic art 
replete with charm, and the other a mechanical art 
— called modernistic. 

Back of all this rhythm which finds itself operat¬ 
ing as the controlling factor in what I am pleased to 
call a living art, as indeed in all art, static or dynamic, 
is the fundamental energy which expresses itself in 
vibrations which had no beginning and will have no 
end. When playing in unordered fields or undi¬ 
rected zones, this vibrant energy displays itself as 
chaos in which the element of time has no bearing and 
no influence. Time is a concept involved in and con¬ 
comitant with conscious life and the spirit. There is 
no life in one- or in two-dimensional space, and con¬ 
sequently no living rhythm. The rhythm which ap¬ 
pears in two-dimensional design is read into it by a 
being conditioned by at least three-dimensional 
space. When vibrant energy is directed into ordered 
paths, organism appears and then life itself. When 
rhythm controls the order the field lies open to the 
tender and ingratiating influence of art. The incom¬ 
plete and unordered mind reads art into the zigzag 
and spasmodic movement of vibrant matter. The 
full and well ordered mind, emotionally endowed, 
IOI 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


finds art only in ordered, rhythmic movement j and 
the higher the type of mind the more insistent will it 
be upon ordered, harmonic and rhythmic expression 
in whatever phase of human endeavor it may be 
pleased to denominate as art. 


102 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 















ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


PRACTICE IS GOING ON UNDER THE BIG 
TOP. WE ENTER WITH FRIENDS ON THE 
SHOW AND FIND MUCH TO INTEREST US. 
A YOUNG LADY IS BEING INSTRUCTED IN 
HORSEMANSHIP, BUT NOT IN THE CON¬ 
TINENTAL MANNER! WE MEET A CONTOR¬ 
TIONIST WHO LEADS US TO THE CONCLU¬ 
SION THAT IN ONE THING, AT LEAST, 
RELIGION AND SCIENCE ARE IN ACCORD. 
WE WATCH A TROUPE OF TEETERBOARD 
ARTISTS AND LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT 
“CONCERTED MOVEMENT” AND “PRECI¬ 
SION OF ATTACK.” ALSO AS TO A “TACK” 
WE TOUCH ON METHODS OF TRAINING. 


W E HAVE JUST come from the tent which 
shelters the “ ring stock,” as the performing 
and riding horses are called, and, through the back 
door, along with the horses he is leading, we enter 
the big top with our guide, a star equestrian, down 
on the bills as “ the World’s Greatest Champion 
Bareback Somersault Rider.” A string of these 
champions crowds my memory. The Melvilles, 
Frank and James; William O’Dale; the Robinsons, 
James and John; Robert Stickney; “Charlie” 
Fish, not, perhaps, the most Apollo-like in figure, 

105 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

but the most brilliant and daring of them all 5 later 
come “ Poodles ” and George of the Hannefordsj 
“ Phil ” of the St. Leons; Percy of the Clarkes 5 not 
to omit, in this day of feminine ascendency, Rose 
Rosalind and May of the Wirths! 

Some new horses are to be broken in and a new 
trick is to be practiced. Indeed, all about us, on the 
track, in rings and high in the air, artists are prac¬ 
ticing their regular turns or working up new ones. 
Our guide gets us chairs from the stands and we draw 
up with a little party at a ringside. The champion 
takes a horse and devotes himself to it and to the 
young daughter of the head of the Wild West show, 
which has but a short hour since finished its after-the- 
circus performance on the track. The young miss is 
at boarding school in the east, but she is spending her 
vacation period on the show and is learning the fine 
art of equestrianism — and at the hands of a past 
master. Every ungraceful motion, every constrained 
movement, is ironed out, not with the rod but by ex¬ 
ample and encouragement. 

Parenthetically, and by way of opposites, while we 
are speaking of constrained movement, that slender 
chap who just nodded to us is a contortionist. He 
has given up his ground work to a great extent and 
specializes on a daring and thrilling trapeze act which 
is popular and in world-wide demand. His sinuous 
movement and flexion are beautiful in the extreme. 
106 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


You and I would not find these distortions and sinu¬ 
osities repulsive, as many have seemed to find them 
and as, perhaps, we did in our youthful days. As I 
see it now, the movements of a good contortionist are 
so attractive in their grace and freedom from restraint 
that I have wondered why they ever did seem other¬ 
wise to me or can so seem to others. I have sought 
the reason, if reason there be. Is theirs the sinuosity 
and grace of the serpent ? Yes, there it is! Our early 
training and heredity have tended to rob us of a 
heritage of beauty. Religion and science have j oined 
hands in this crime. The story of the serpent in Eden 
and the curse put upon him, the age-long struggle of 
humanity to slough off, to ascend out of, the reptilian 
forms and movements! There it is. Not only have 
we lost the power to glide, the power to fly, but we 
have lost the instinct for beauty in movement which 
these things imply. I, for one, am glad to have re¬ 
gained some of my lost heritage, glad that I can love 
the serpent — at least that I can love his movement 
— glad that I can see beauty in the movements of the 
contortionist and feel the rhythm in the flight from 
trapeze, from bar to bar. And, bye the bye, let 
Albert Powell correct, as he will, the mistaken notion 
that there is anything abnormal in the physical struc¬ 
ture and endowment of the contortionist. The abil¬ 
ity to bend, twist and distort the body results from 
continuous and strenuous training and practice be- 
107 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

gun at an early age when joints are flexible. Joints 
yield to the direction of the will, and the body, 
rightly controlled, is capable of extremes in relaxa¬ 
tion and flexibility. 

As our friend the contortionist has passed, we are 
free to direct our attention to where Ernest Clarke, 
who, with his brothers, is rider as well as aerialist, is 
to attempt a forward somersault from the ground to 
the back of a running horse. He is using the me¬ 
chanic now that he may not get a fall, for the per¬ 
formers take no unnecessary risks in practice. He 
essays the turn once or twice. 

Turning to the fair neighbor on my right I say, 
“ Now, if I were doing that I should take off so and 
so.” 

To which she responds, “ I get it 5 why don’t you 
speak to Ernie? ” 

“ He’d like my nerve! An outsider making sug¬ 
gestions to a man of his experience! ” 

“ Oh!' he wouldn’t mind. We’re all glad to get 
pointers from others.” After a moment: “ I am a 
rider. I was one of the Hodginis.” 

I knew that she was one of the a riding Rooneys ” 
but I had not known that she was a Hodgini. “ I 
know your family act very well,” said I. 

“ Yes, I was a Hodgini,” and she spoke with a 
pride of family which would have done credit to a 
Cabot or a Lowell. And there on the track was her 
108 



OUR. FRIEND. THE EQUILIBR1STIC 1 

CONTORTIONIST ‘DEMONSTRATES' INTHE BACKYARD, 

SEE PAGE I06 


109 
















BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

husband, a “ riding Rooney,” trying out a beautiful 
horse. The two Rooneys, brothers, one also a double 
trapeze artist, and their wives, were doing a graceful 
riding act on the show while the Clarkes, three broth¬ 
ers, assisted by the wife of one and a clever partner, 
were performing simultaneously in another ring. 
This will give a bit of an idea of family participation 
in the life which the circus not only permits of but also 
demands. 

The family life under the big top is real and sin¬ 
cere, possibly because each member of the circle is so 
dependent on the sympathy and cooperation of the 
others. No professional jealousy enters to estrange 
husband and wife or part brother from brother, and 
no vanity. None knows or much cares what he or 
she is called on the bills or in what high sounding and 
extravagant terms he may grace the programs. That 
is all press-agent stuff, all publicity for the show, all 
claptrap and ballyhoo which stirs the pulse of the 
public but does not affect the artists. They are 
serene in the knowledge that they are doing interest¬ 
ing and difficult stuff and doing it well. 

Having, as I have said, drummed in an orchestra, 
where the results of an ill-timed stroke would be un¬ 
pleasant, to say the least, I know something of “ con¬ 
certed movement,” “ precision of attack,” and such 
matters as they affect chamber music and orchestral 
performances. Along that line in another art let us 
no 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


glance at what the Picchianis are doing with their 
practice hour on Stage Number Three, which is in 
full view from our seats at the neighboring ringside. 

This troupe of acrobats, six or eight in number, 
uses the teeterboard. It would seem unnecessary to 
go into the mechanics of the teeterboard. You all 
have “ seesawed ” upon it in your youth, and you 
know how a heavier weight suddenly applied to one 
end will send skyward a lighter weight resting on 
the end opposite. That is the principle applied in 
the act we are about to witness. As a new topmounter 
is being tried out the mechanic is being used so we 
shall see no man hurt by a fall to the floor although 
we may see a human shaft, four high, crumple. The 
“ mechanic,” roughly speaking, is a rope run 
through a block at the top of the tent with one end 
attached to a belt around the waist of the performer 
and the other held by an assistant, leaving the rope 
slack so as not to interfere with the movement of the 
acrobat, though should he miss the turn the rope is 
drawn taut, preventing a fall to the ground. 

Notice that three of the men are standing three 
high 5 that is, one man stands upon the ground, a 
second has mounted lightly to his shoulders, and a 
third to the shoulders of the second. They are, 
named in the order in which they stand, the “ under¬ 
stander,” that is the man on the ground; the next 
above is the “ middleman,” and the third, or the one 
in 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

at the top, is the “ topmounter.” In a moment, and 
after this manner, the third man will become a sec¬ 
ond “ middleman ” and the fourth, now the “ top- 
mounter,” will be added. Watch this; it is interest¬ 
ing. The men standing three high are about a 
yard from the grounded end of the teeterboard upon 
which the fourth man is standing poised, alert, with 
his back to the three, the four thus facing in the same 
direction. A fifth mounts to a pedestal or perch 
about ten feet above the ground, facing his com¬ 
panions in the act. At a signal he jumps straight 
downward, landing with all his force on the tilted-up 
end of the teeterboard. Simultaneously with his 
impact number four rises like a human arrow, throws 
a back somersault at the top of the rise and lands with 
his feet upon the shoulders of the third man, and 
there they stand “ four high.” * 

Did you note just then that layout twister, another 
example of marvelous control? The man was shot 
high into the air from the teeterboard and landed 

* The Picchianis were the first teeterboard artists within my 
ken to accomplish the somersault four high. When first presented 
special attention was always directed toward the act. Now the 
turn is included regularly in the routine of several troupes and 
its effect is lost upon many a spectator. The Yacopis are perhaps 
the finest exponents of the turn today. The somersaulter of this 
troupe is a charming young woman who has not bobbed her hair nor 
affected male attire and manners. In this regard she is altogether 
representative of circus women, who do not in the least consider 
that a natural feminine bearing in any way detracts from the virtue 
of their performance or the value of its art. 

112 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


on the shoulders of the understander, in the mean¬ 
time making a complete turn in two directions with 
the body bowed slightly backward, this position of 
the body being maintained until the landing was ef¬ 
fected. You have seen a diver execute a similar 
movement, the twisting dive, from platform or 
springboard into the water. But all the diver was 
concerned with was, after a graceful turn, to enter 
the water feet first, while the acrobat had to make his 
turn and land upright upon the firm footing of a solid 
pair of shoulders. These different terminations to 
seemingly similar movements produce very different 
mental states in the two performers, the mind of the 
diver remaining passive throughout the turn while 
the mind of the acrobat changes sharply from its 
passivity to a surcharged activity in making the 
landing. In point of skill and technique the acro¬ 
batic turn immeasurably exceeds the other. 

I shall not take time to give further details of the 
teeterboard performance, beautiful and interesting 
though it is; I shall only remark that in no musical 
performance, whether by trios, quartets or full or¬ 
chestras, is there required or often achieved such 
concerted action, such precision of attack, such flow 
of mental rhythm as is present in the act which we 
have just witnessed on this stage under the big top j 
nor does that absolutely perfect judgment of inter¬ 
related time and space, so necessary to the consum- 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

mation of this act, as of all the others we have wit¬ 
nessed and are yet to witness, in the least inhere in 
any musical performance. We are fortunate in view¬ 
ing these acts in rehearsal where we can study them 
intimately as we could not during the confusion and 
excitement which accompany a regular exhibition. 

A duo of performers is setting up a trampoline on 
the stage which the Picchianis have just left. The 
trampoline is a heavy canvas sheet about the size of a 
bedspread, stretched between springs. The resili¬ 
ence of the sheet is extraordinary; one jumping into 
it is shot upward as though from a catapult. The 
sheet is elevated about two feet from the floor and 
a pedestal at one end is some two or three feet higher 
up. The performer somersaults to the sheet or 
jumps upon it as the man just did upon the teeter- 
board, the difference being that the jumper himself, 
rather than another, is shot high into the air. As the 
effort to rise is so minimized the performer can de¬ 
vote all his energy to the turns. 

With this in mind we may watch understanding^ 
this particular demonstration. The artist mounts to 
the pedestal, standing with his back to the trampoline 
sheet. He composes himself for an instant and fixes 
in his mind the rhythm of the movement. Watch 
him! He turns a back somersault and lands upright 
on the sheet. He shoots up, not perpendicularly 
but inclined slightly backward. High in the air he 
114 



xi5 


SEE PAGE I 14 





BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

throws a back somersault, follows this with a full 
twister which takes him into a plane at right angles 
to and back again into the plane of the movement in 
which he throws another back somersault and alights 
upon his feet on the floor. The marvel of this per¬ 
formance lies in the fact that the turn into the plane 
at right angles to the movement does not end that 
movement but interrupts and then restores it, the 
movement being completed in the direction of the 
original impulse. The performer cannot start on 
this journey through the air, watch a map upon his 
knees, and figure out which direction he shall take 
when he comes to a sign post! Clear in his mind as 
he starts is a diagram of the course upon which are 
registered in rhythmical succession the impulses nec¬ 
essary to perfect accomplishment, to perfect control 
of a willing body. I hesitate to speak again of the 
marvelous control of movement in space, that coordi¬ 
nated relationship of time and space without mastery 
of which an act such as this must inevitably end in 
disaster $ something must be left to the reader’s im¬ 
agination. 

w Bombayo — the man from India ” is coming 
into the top, and we shall witness some interesting 
experiments in the rhythmic art when his “ bounding 
rope” has been set up and he has mounted to it. 
This rope, some thirty feet in length between sup¬ 
ports, is stretched horizontally some ten or twelve 
ii 6 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


feet above the ground. At both ends are springs 
which give the rope great resilience, so that when 
Bombayo, sitting astride, impels the rope up and 
down, keeping it the while absolutely in the vertical 
plane, the range of the vibration is from two to three 
feet above and below the horizontal. Height is de¬ 
termined by the velocity of the vibration which the 
performer controls at will just as he controls the 
height at which he shall make his turn in the air. 
We shall see Bombayo rise into the air, assume a sit¬ 
ting posture, and with deliberation turn his body so 
as to alight sitting sidesaddle; then rise and just as 
deliberately turn his body so as to alight sidesaddle 
facing in the opposite direction. From this position 
we shall see him rise, straighten his body, and alight 
standing on the rope, which is brought suddenly to a 
quiescent state. With this latter movement Bom¬ 
bayo concludes all his turns. 

The vibration, intensified or restrained, is to give 
height and not to determine the velocity of the turn, 
which is a factor of the mental equation. In order 
that the landing may be perfect it would seem that 
there must be some definite time element correlating 
these three factors — vibration, height and velocity 
of turn. In reality Bombayo seems to go out of a 
violently worked up speed of rope vibration into an 
almost slow-motion picture speed of body in rise 
and revolution. The effect is startling. To rise high 
117 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

into the air and, turning twice backward, alight 
astride the rope and then on the rebound stand erect 
upon the rope is a feature of each performance. But 
Bombayo surpasses this difficult turn, as we shall now 
hope to see him do in practice. 

There is a difference, aside from that of mere di¬ 
rection, between the forward and the backward som¬ 
ersault, as will be explained later on. Suffice it now 
to say that the forward is the more difficult. How¬ 
ever, let one of the highest authorities in the show 
world today describe the turn. I quote from a per¬ 
sonal letter I received from the man whose double 
and pirouette in the air to his brother, the catcher, I 
shall describe later. “You will, I know, also be 
pleased to hear of the latest achievement of your 
friend, Bombayo. In East St. Louis last Monday at 
practice between shows he did a double forward on 
the rope. It was just as high, as well turned, and his 
command of the revolution was as splendid as it is in 
all the rest of his work. He is not doing it in the 
act but he could do it if he wished.” I am introducing 
this excerpt not only to describe this turn but as evi¬ 
dence of that kindly attitude of interest and apprecia¬ 
tion on the part of one performer toward the work of 
another to which I referred in the description of our 
visit to the cookhouse and to the back yard. Later 
Bombayo introduced the double forward regularly 
into his act. 


118 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


I cannot leave the present discussion of time-space 
pattern and the necessary accompaniment of precision 
and accurate judgment without calling attention to a 
turn requiring the active participation of seven men, 
two of whom act as sensitized backrests for two of 
the others who receive the somersaulter upon their 
upturned feet and help him on in his rhythmic course 
through the air. The initial lift is supplied by a com¬ 
panion rather than a teeterboard or a trampoline. 
The somersaulter is pitched up in upright position 
from the stage and makes a backward turn, alighting 
feet to feet upon the upper one of the first duo, from 
which he is passed on with a turn to the feet of the 
upper of the second duo; thence, with a similar turn, 
to the shoulders of a man standing upon the ground; 
thence, with a turn, to the ground — three backward 
somersaults in a row from and to the seemingly most 
sensitive and most precarious of footings and then 
onto terra firma. While the rhythm of the act is in 
itself not so involved, it is sufficiently complicated by 
the physical and mental factors of its environment 
to make it worthy of note for its technical difficulties 
as well as for the beautiful flow of the bodily and 
spiritual movement. 

As our eyes and ears have been drinking in the 
wonders of the desultory rehearsal, we have not seen 
a frown or ugly look nor heard a harsh or bitter word. 
Of course the people whom we are seeing in action are 
119 



f 


A RHYTHMIC TIME AND SPACE PATTERN- fOUK SACKSOMERSAUIJS 
IN SUCCESSION - f ROM FLOOR..TO FEET.TO FEET/IO SHOULDERS ,TO FLOOR. 


SEE PAGE 119 


120 






ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


well along in years or have social or caste connections 
which would tend to ameliorate conditions. But 
every person we have been watching has been taking 
his work seriously, has been treating others consid¬ 
erately, and has seemed to be impelled by the love 
of the thing itself. All of which brings me back to 
what I have already said: that a work of art results 
primarily from activities undertaken for “ the love 
of the doing,” the effect upon others being a sec¬ 
ondary consideration. This second phase will be 
touched upon later. I have said, too, that manners 
in the circus and beyond the lot have undergone a 
change for the better. 

The juxtaposition of these topics — impulse to¬ 
ward doing beautifully and changing manners and 
methods — brings me to a consideration of how this 
impulse is to be directed to the end that artists may 
be created. The attitude of the old time circus 
trainer, if we may believe the Hey Rube school of 
writers, was a to catch ’em young and beat it into 
’em! ” Reluctantly I am forced to believe that there 
is an element of truth in some of the tales that, even 
today, physical punishment is accorded some pupils 
who may be backward in accomplishment. Toby 
Tyler, back in the sixties, may well have been 
“ beaten into equestrianism ” — but not in three 
weeks! The “ beat it into ’em ” phase was an expres¬ 
sion of the psychology of an age when brutality was 
121 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

prevalent as an inspirer to good deeds not only in 
the training ring but in the public schools and in 
many a home. I am not certain that the practice of 
urging the child onward and upward through fear 
and the application of physical punishment has alto¬ 
gether been abolished even in this socially progres¬ 
sive land. 

But methods more cruel than blows have been used 
for inducing beautiful accomplishment. As artists 
are both born and made, posture — for instance, like 
that assumed by “ James Melville, the Australian 
Horseman,” upon the back of his running steed — 
may be the result of the application of either one of 
two processes. The first process is subj ective and the 
result depends upon the individual’s own will and 
aesthetic perceptions in working out the problem. 
Direction in the case of one imbued with idealism and 
the will to achieve need only take the form of demon¬ 
stration, counsel and advice, as has already been in¬ 
stanced in Percy Clarke’s attitude toward the young 
girl in the practice hour. The second process con¬ 
sists in the application of external means to rectify 
faulty expression and to induce a correct attitude of 
mind and body, for the body cannot function beauti¬ 
fully when the mind is wayward. There are many 
performers before the public today who were sub¬ 
jected to the former beneficent process. I have met 
122 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


a number of them. However, I know one per¬ 
former, a very accomplished one, who, if we may 
believe what he once told me in confidential mood, 
was subjected to the second and not so attractive 
process. In order to keep him upon his toes while he 
practiced upon the back of a moving horse, he was 
forced to wear shoes with tacks, points uppermost, at 
the heel so that should he slump he would have a 
sharp reminder of the fact without need of extraneous 
word or direction. If his chest hollowed and his 
shoulders came forward in the attempt to maintain 
equilibrium, his arms were bound back. And if his 
eyes sought the horse’s back his head was held high 
by a stiff, tall band or collar which propped up his 
chin. He came to be a fair worker, appearing in his 
earlier days as a “ charming young equestrienne.” 
Today he clowns the act cleverly; for he is at heart a 
clown of many considerable accomplishments and 
never, when he ran away and joined the circus, 
wished or intended to become a rider. Fate, how¬ 
ever, took him in hand and he has lived to tell the 
story — in private. 

I once told this story to a well known artist of the 
sawdust arena who smiled and, having named the 
taskmaster of the tale, “ a gentle old soul,” indicated 
that my friend had been drawing the long bow. 
However, I am repeating the story now as it coincides 
123 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

in a measure with what we were told was, in the old 
days, the continental method of instilling the spirit 
of beauty into uninspired youth, or at least of pro¬ 
ducing a form which would seem to correspond to the 
outer manifestation of that inner spirit. We also 
have heard of stinging lashes on the yet tender calves 
of prospective ballerinas, and sharp raps across the 
knuckles of future masters of the violin j admonitions 
for the good of the pupils and the glory of the art by 
instructors who were idealists or who had lost their 
tempers. These tales also were from the continent or 
of continental masters, and, while they easily could 
be believed of people who were brought up in an at¬ 
mosphere of subserviency to autocratic power, they 
cannot so readily be related to the psychology of the 
freeborn American citizen! However, we rest now 
serene in the belief that educational and social ideals 
have changed for the better in this country, at least, 
and that there is no longer need to “ beat it into ’em,” 
nor is there longer, if there ever were, reason to 
a catch ’em young.” 

There used to exist generally in the circus — and 
it still does exist to some extent — the notion that the 
child who was destined to become a circus artist must 
be taken in hand at a very tender age. I have said, 
and maintain, that this applies only to contortionists 
and not in every case to them. Leitzel, beautiful 
artist of the Roman rings, began serious training for 
124 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


her professional career at the age of thirteen. The 
Voltas, whose name will carry on far into the future 
of the circus, were college graduates in England. 
Throughout their school and college years and later 
they u worked ” on the bars merely for the joy of it. 
They were bank clerks when a manager was told of 
their prowess and, seeing them, engaged them for 
an American tour. In America they met and asso¬ 
ciated themselves with the Hanlons, and Hanlon- 
Volta became a word to conjure with in the acrobatic 
world. The members of the marvelous Colleano 
family were old enough to have ideals, to know what 
they wanted to do and why they wanted to do it, be¬ 
fore they embarked upon their circus career. Theirs 
was a background not only of intellectual but of ap¬ 
plied force in father and mother who were noted, one 
for his strength and endurance, the other for her 
grace and charm of person. It were well in the circus 
field as in any branch of artistic endeavor to let the 
child lie fallow, playing creatively and imaginatively 
in a cultural environment until he becomes firm and 
well knit in mind and body 5 then he is ready to at¬ 
tempt self-expression with the agreeable certainty 
that he has something in him to express. Certain it 
is the child should not be forced to undertake an art 
expression until he feels the art urge, and this he must 
feel without having it pounded into him. The child 
is put at an early age into any profession or trade only 
125 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

for the selfish and unworthy purpose of making him a 
wage earner and a support to those who should be 
supporting and nurturing him. 

Once upon a time in enthusiastic mood I wrote of 
the work of the child acrobat as “ glorified play.” I 
later found it well to hedge my dictum about with 
conditions, although I still think that the child acro¬ 
bat should regard his work as undertaken for the love 
of the doing, the attitude which makes it play. There 
are children of the circus, not as yet in the ring when 
this incident occurred, but with longings and aspira¬ 
tions in that direction, who have to be held in check 
or they would give parents and instructors no chance 
to rest and relax. My wife and I sat beneath the hos¬ 
pitable awning before the private dressing tent of a 
noted family of riders intermarried with an equally 
noted family of aerialists. Both for the season were 
on the same large popular show. It was a Sunday in 
midsummer on the outskirts of a large manufacturing 
town. The sun shone, the grass and the trees were 
green, the air was soft and languorous and, all in all, 
the time between shows in the back yard was best de¬ 
voted to rest and contemplation; at least so thought 
the elders who were lounging in easy chairs in the 
shade, enjoying quiet conversation, writing letters or 
plying needle and thread. Not so with the younger 
generation. Their active minds impelled to bodily 
activity; and with the charming little girls, cousins, 
126 


ON STAGE NUMBER THREE 


one of eight and two of nine, this meant bringing the 
riding horse out into the back yard and slinging the 
practice trapeze from the stay lines of the big top. 
These little enthusiasts could hardly take “ no ” for 
an answer, but finally yielded to the gentle influence 
of friend and earth and sky and quieted down with 
the rest of us. These children are keen for the work 
and it is no drudgery for them to go, as they do almost 
every weekday, into the ring during practice hour, 
where they are tenderly guided by father or mother 
or uncle or aunt who let no element of fear intrude 
to mar the present or cloud the future. Knowing 
and sympathizing with child and grownup as I did, 
I rarely have passed a more enjoyable day on a circus 
lot. 

A year later it was my pleasure to witness the pro¬ 
fessional debut of two of these children, the youngest 
appearing with her father and uncles with the airs and 
postures of a confirmed equestrienne, and one of the 
others appearing as ringmaster in the popular family 
riding act, taking the place of her grandmother who 
was temporarily in hospital. The other of the two 
ten year olds already was in a family juggling act 
with her father, mother and two elder sisters in the 
center ring. 

In my boyhood days a Sunday circus performance 
was a thing unknown and in the then existing state of 
society would not have been tolerated. Sunday for 
127 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


some was really a day of rest. The circus would now 
and again show our town on a Saturday and when¬ 
ever it did it would remain quietly on the pitch until 
sundown of the next day. So it was that, eluding the 
watchful eyes of anxious parents, I would now and 
then of a Sunday afternoon find my way to the back 
yard, which was not as much of an institution then as 
now, and intrigue some kindhearted acrobat into giv¬ 
ing me pointers. I did not realize then as I do now 
what a blessing a quiet Sunday afternoon might be to 
overworked performers and attaches generally doing 
one-day stands in towns reached over rough and 
muddy or dusty country roads. I thought of these 
old days as I was enjoying, on the particular Sunday 
of which I write, the hospitality of my friends be¬ 
neath the fly of the dressing tent and in the cookhouse. 
Of course, it goes without saying that we, my wife and 
I, had seen the matinee performance. Before in¬ 
vading the back yard we had purchased our tickets, as 
all true circus fans do, although we entered the big 
top through the back door just as we did to witness 
practice on this Stage Number Three. 


128 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 



130 


SEE PAGE 149 
















IN RING NUMBER THREE 


AFTER A SOCIAL CALL IN THE DRESSING 
TENT WE WATCH A TURN IN THE AIR, 
DISCOURSE UPON ITS TECHNIQUE AND 
SPIRIT, AND MAKE COMPARISONS WITH 
OTHERS OF THE ARTS. WE DISCUSS AN 
APPLICATION OF MATHEMATICS AND FOR¬ 
MULAS TO ACROBATIC TURNS. WE WATCH 
HORSES IN THE RING GOING COUNTER TO 
OUR PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS OF HOW 
HORSES SHOULD RUN IN VIEW OF OUR 
INGRAINED AND DEEP-SEATED RACIAL 
TENDENCIES INVOLVING DIRECTION OF 
MOVEMENT BOTH MENTAL AND PHYSICAL. 


A BUGLE HAS sounded, the band begins to 
play, and in the horde of performers, horses, 
elephants and camels fantastically costumed and daz- 
zlingly caparisoned, individuals begin to be distin¬ 
guishable as the units fall smoothly into line out of 
what seemed inextricable confusion 5 and the “ spec ” 
has vanished through the back door into the vast 
and gloomy spaces of the top. We drop into the 
dressing tent to chat quietly with a few of the men 
who, due to contract provision, are not required to 
appear in the spectacle. The dressing top is a canvas 
of considerable magnitude, for under it hundreds of 

131 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

performers, men and women, find shelter. The en¬ 
trance giving upon the yard is just off the center of 
the long side. From this entrance there extends across 
the tent on the short axis a space a few yards wide 
walled in on either side with canvas. This forms a 
common meeting ground for the sexes. Beyond the 
wall at the right is the women’s dressing room, as it 
is called, and at the left, the men’s. The men are sit¬ 
ting on their trunks or reclining in camp or steamer 
chairs reading, writing or conversing - y or, maybe, 
women are embroidering or making costumes while 
men are painting, modeling and designing. We are 
invited to sit, which we do, and chat while letting our 
eyes take in the surroundings. We note the prevail¬ 
ing orderliness. Along the center of the aisles which 
parallel the shorter axis are innumerable pails of 
fresh water for the scrub down which follows the 
turn. Each performer has a particular space allotted 
to him for the season and when he comes into the 
tent on a new pitch he finds his trunk in its proper 
location, placed there by the property man. A tall 
iron rod is driven into the ground beside each trunk 
and on its branching arms are hung the make-up mir¬ 
rors, the street clothes and personal belongings of 
the performer. 

Suddenly all is bustle and activity, for the proces¬ 
sion has returned to the yard. The fantastic gar¬ 
ments are being laid aside and the performers are 
132 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


donning their tights and preparing for their turns. 
Your ear catches snatch of song and bandied word. 
Your eye notes the leisurely application of grease 
paint and make-up and catches a glint of color and 
the glitter of spangles. But there is no evidence of 
haste. All is moving with the artist’s deliberation 
and sureness of touch; no call-boys, no hurry-up 
calls! Indeed, you may be engaged in leisurely con¬ 
versation, unconscious of externals, when one of your 
companions remarks apologetically: “ Will you ex¬ 
cuse us now? That is the music for the perch act; 
we’re on next.” 

Let us enter the big top through the back door, 
with two of the men with whom we have been con¬ 
versing — two gentle, restrained and quiet-spoken 
men of the third generation of circus folk — and 
watch their performance and marvel at it as I tell you 
something of it. Beneath the frame an ample net is 
stretched so that you may watch the performance 
without nervous strain, as seldom a man falls and, 
with the net, the probability of a serious termination 
to a fall is minimized; with these men I should say 
it was eliminated, as they have brought to perfection 
the art of falling. You watch them doing their fly- 
aways, somersaults, twisters and pirouettes or spins 
in the air, catches and returns — all executed with 
perfection of form, all expressions of abstract and 
ideal beauty — while I describe as well as I can in 
133 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

words the turn with which Ernest Clarke and his 
brother, Charles, conclude their act. Charles is 
pendant, head downward, from a rhythmically 
swinging trapeze some yards away from and facing 
his brother. At a signal from Charles, Ernest, who 
is poised on the distant perch attuning himself to the 
rhythm, grasps with both hands the bar of his tra¬ 
peze, which moves through a longer arc than does 
that of his brother, and, with a vigorous initial move¬ 
ment, makes a rapid swing, at the end of which he 
leaves his bar, makes two complete backward revo¬ 
lutions in the air — that is, throws a double back 
somersault — follows with a pirouette or full turn 
on a vertical axis at right angles to the axis of the 
somersaults, catches, and is caught by, his brother, 
who returns him with a pirouette to the bar and 
thence to the perch or pedestal from which he 
started; and this without a break in the complex and 
synchronized rhythm of the factors in this entranc¬ 
ing equation of movement. 

This act appears to be, and generally, though er¬ 
roneously, is announced as “ two somersaults and a 
twister,” but really it is even more difficult of accom¬ 
plishment than that, involving as it does complication 
of rhythm. A twister is a turn in two directions at 
one and the same time and, in conjunction with a 
somersault, merely involves a continuity, though 
with a thematic variation, of the original movement. 
134 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


The pirouette or spin upon a vertical axis means, as 
you may readily perceive, the introduction and har¬ 
monizing of an entirely new element. These move¬ 
ments, the twister and the pirouette, as we learned in 
watching the tumblers in Ring Number Two, involve 
the third dimension; and I know from personal ex¬ 
perience as well as from association with the artists 
that transition into the third dimension and accom¬ 
plishment of a rhythm in the three dimensions of 
space induce a joy akin to ecstasy. What would a 
fourth dimension not mean to an acrobat! 

Now an act such as that just described does not 
come all at once full blown and perfect out of a clear 
sky, but its final accomplishment involves travail of 
spirit and a discipline of mind and body almost be¬ 
yond belief. But before I speak of that let me call 
your attention to the fact that in the performance you 
have just witnessed you have seen no third party 
grasp the trapeze which the performer left swinging 
free in the air and, at the opportune moment, return 
it to him. On the contrary, you have seen the trapeze 
come back, as of its own volition, to the point at which 
it may conveniently be grasped when the performer 
is returned to it by his partner. This fact marks this 
act as highly superior and unique in the aerial realm. 
The appearance of that free swinging bar at the right 
place, at the right time, is bound up with that domi¬ 
nation of the spirit over mind, body and inert matter 
135 



SEE PAGE 176 







IN RING NUMBER THREE 


at which I have hinted and of which I shall now speak 
more fully. In it is involved the pendulum move¬ 
ment of the trapezes, the radii and length of the arcs 
through which they must swing, the synchronization, 
rhythm and speed of the movement, and the manner 
and force in and with which the performer leaves the 
bar when he makes his turn in the air. These are the 
physical factors which through spiritual direction 
will receive correlation and coordination. Let us re¬ 
member that whether or not the net is underneath 
the performer no mechanical means for keeping the 
body from falling can possibly be used in working up 
an act such as this. 

Now, again, we are in the dressing tent. “ Ernie,” 
I say, “ often as I have seen it I never cease to marvel 
at that last turn ; its rhythm is so complicated.” 
Then with a quick turn of the subject: “ You must 
have had a few falls into the net before you got that 
act to perfection. Five hundred, say? ” 

u Well,” he answers , ic five hundred would hardly 
be a circumstance. We tried it at each and every re¬ 
hearsal for a year and no fewer than ten times at a 
rehearsal before ever our hands came together ” 
(and every try meant a fall into the net). u Then 
we caught and held $ and in three and one-half years 
more — four and a half in all, longer than a college 
course — we reached the point where we thought we 
would be justified in presenting it in public.” 

137 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

Think of it, you people, who, comfortably dis¬ 
posed in your studios and libraries, are writing essays, 
painting pictures, modeling figures, learning pieces 
on the piano or on the fiddle for the edification of the 
public and gratification of self — think of it! More 
than two thousand falls, each fraught with danger to 
life or limb, before the hands of the two performers 
came together; and then three and a half years in¬ 
volving many hundred failures before patience and 
endurance, courage and determination, had mastered 
the order and rhythm out of which came an act of 
transcending beauty so approximately perfect in exe¬ 
cution that its authors could conscientiously submit 
it to the consideration of a highly critical though 
equally uncomprehending public. 

Having by the foregoing description and com¬ 
ment drawn the attention of dilettante and profes¬ 
sional to other lines of expression, we find this a 
convenient place in which to dwell upon certain rela¬ 
tionships in the arts, as well as upon certain creative 
and technical differences. This act which we have 
just witnessed, together with others of varying char¬ 
acter which already have or still are to come to our 
notice, requires for its execution technical perfection 
as well as superphysical qualities in the performers 
beyond that demanded by any or all other of the arts; 
for, as I have said, life and limb are involved as well 
as pride of profession and of artistic accomplishment. 
138 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


Not only are these performers fine technicians ; they 
are creative artists of a rare type. No theatrical 
a illusion of the first time ” need envelop their per¬ 
formances -y each individual act is a new creation — a 
new birth. I am aware that this statement, as regards 
creativity, may be challenged 5 but not by one who, 
besides being temperamentally and physically 
equipped, has had personal experience of the art. 
Such a one well knows that each and every turn 
successfully and artistically accomplished — and no 
turn is successful if it be not artistic — is a new ad¬ 
venture, a new act of creation, even though it may 
have been performed one thousand times before. 
No somersault thrown is a copy of the ones done 
previously. The same mental attitude, the same 
power of coordination, the same rhythmic impulse, 
the same fine frenzy, all are present in the last as 
in the first and as in each intermediate perfected ac¬ 
complishment. That does not hold in painting, in 
sculpture, in architecture, in literature nor in musical 
composition 3 a thing in these arts once done is done 
once and for all and never again can come in response 
to the call of creative impulse. Whatever is done a 
second time in these arts, whether by the originator 
himself or by another, is merely a lifeless copy, not 
a living creation. 

The unenlightened (shall I say?) hold that acro¬ 
batics is mere virtuosity and upon a lower plane than, 
139 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


for instance, are singing, instrumentalizing and act¬ 
ing, in that no intellectual or emotional content is 
present. In the matter of such content, however, 
while the four activities might be placed on a par, yet 
on the creative and constructive side acrobatics stands 
alone. In singing, acting and instrumentalizing the 
basic form is contributed by another in text and score, 
while the virtuoso contributes only an emotional in¬ 
terpretation $ the creative, constructive principle is 
wanting in the performer and absent from the per¬ 
formance. In acrobatics, as in architecture, to cite 
a sister art, the constructive principle is basic and in¬ 
herent in the conception and in the performance. It 
is a spiritual factor or content which does not inhere in 
virtuosity. The constructive or structural principle 
furnishes the basic form through which the spirit 
manifests itself. Possibly the acrobat who is just 
artist has the same intellectual limitations outside his 
art as has any other artist as such. But the acrobat 
is not solely an interpreter. One who has the con¬ 
structive principle alive within him cannot rest con¬ 
tent with mere interpretation — with merely singing, 
playing or acting; that is, in mere virtuosity. He 
must construct, he must create form ; hence he rdust 
be a painter, a sculptor, an acrobat or an architect — 
in the ascending order given. In speaking of painter, 
sculptor and architect in this connection it goes with¬ 
out saying that I have in mind only that rara avis, 
140 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


the creator, and not the innumerable horde of copy¬ 
ists and imitators. 

Underlying all these beautiful movements in 
tumbling, in juggling and in mid-air is u feeling ” 
— intense emotionalism — controlled by the math¬ 
ematics of the mind. I am using mathematics as ap¬ 
plied to aesthetics in its true spiritual meaning and 
not in the pseudo-scientific sense in which it is ap¬ 
plied by “ dynamic-symmetrists,” “ ad-quadratum- 
ites ” and those other mechanistic minds who would 
make all aesthetic expression in the plastic and 
graphic arts depend upon a previously constructed 
framework of geometry, whether of squares, rec¬ 
tangles, triangles,* revolving diagonals or arcs, or any 
or all in combination. Undoubtedly a sufficiently 
learned and practiced mathematician, given all the 
factors of the equation — and they are multitudinous 
to a degree — could plot the curve of the center of 
gravity of the acrobat’s body and the gyrations of 
the body about that center as it traverses its beautiful 
path in space j and this, conceivably, might be done 
before or after the fact. But woe betide the indi¬ 
vidual, acrobat or other, who should attempt to 
achieve the turn by following the mathematical 
formula. The first attempt would never be followed 
by a second. If the victim of the mathematical fal¬ 
lacy were to survive to essay another turn he would 
call upon experience, instinct and u feeling ” rather 
141 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

than upon abstract mathematics. It is when brought 
into contrast with a living art like acrobatics that these 
geometric and dynamic theories of design find them¬ 
selves so palpably reduced to rank absurdity j as they 
do, also, when applied to architecture of other than 
the copy-plate type. 

In a book called The Meaning of Architecture 
which I published many years ago, I defined art as 
a the expression in terms of beauty of a reconciliation 
to the struggle of life.” Religion or ethics, as dis¬ 
tinguished from theology, is an extension of that same 
reconciliation in the field of goodness. The function 
of art, in the acceptance of, or reconciliation to, that 
struggle which is involved in all upward striving and 
progress, is to make that struggle beautiful in itself 
and to be welcomed for the opportunity it affords to 
produce the best in man and to give the final flower 
to the development of character. In its function of 
beautifying and symbolizing the struggle art relates 
itself so closely with architecture and with acrobatics. 
In architecture the struggle has to do with the inter¬ 
relationships of structural stresses and strains acting 
through inert matter made vital through the opera¬ 
tion of the human spirit in the original conception 
and the ensuing design. In acrobatics the struggle 
has to do with bodily stresses and strains producing 
beautiful patterns through the play of the inhering 
142 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


spirit upon mind and vitalized matter. In architec¬ 
ture inert material reacts to the external impress of 
mind and spirit in man. In acrobatics the vitalized 
body reacts to the mind and spirit inhering in it 
through its very nature and evolution. 

There are those who profess to believe that the 
body is one factor and the spirit another; the latter 
susceptible, as still others think, of disembodiment. 
But when we watched cosmic forces in play, as we did 
in the first presentation on Stage Number Two, we 
saw chaos, in which the spirit of life, of creation, was 
active, resolve itself into differentials, each unit car¬ 
rying its own spirit and each manifesting it in its own 
characteristic manner; reaching, as it seems to us, its 
highest expression in man. Therefore, my concep¬ 
tion of the matter is that in acrobatics the spirit within 
is reacting on itself through the medium of a vitalized 
body which but for the spirit would become non¬ 
existent; while in architecture inert, insensate mass 
is made to carry a spiritual message through reaction 
to an external spirit resident in man. Architecture 
carries its message visually long after the spirit which 
impressed itself upon the stone has vanished. The 
beautiful body of the acrobat, in common with those 
of all his human fellows, crumbles into dust with 
the departure of the spirit. And yet all this is really 
an inversion. It were truer to say that as long as the 
H3 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

architectural medium exists it will carry the spiritual 
message of the human who endowed it with life and 
that when the human body ceases to function the 
spirit goes out as a candle flame in the breeze. 

While we have been discussing certain mathemat¬ 
ical relationships in the arts and have been contem¬ 
plating the deeper matter of a spiritual and bodily 
essence which are one, lackeys have been preparing 
the rings for the various equestrian turns. They 
have spread heavy circular carpets in the rings, leav¬ 
ing a yard or more of turf or soil between carpet and 
ringbank for a track upon which the horses may run. 
The equestrians, in at least two of the rings, will in¬ 
dulge in cartwheels, round-off backs or full round¬ 
offs upon leaving or in regaining the horse’s back 
and the carpet will serve as a tumbling mat. In all 
the rings we shall note a demonstration of inverted 
or reversed racial expression which challenges our 
interest and, later on, our comment. 

Let us now watch closely the act as presented in 
Ring Number Three by a family of clever riders 
throwing somersaults forward and backward upon 
the bare backs of running steeds. We shall watch 
this turn to the exclusion of that in Ring Number 
Two, the center ring, for the reason that in Ring 
Number Three we may study to better advantage 
the harmonic relationship existing between horse 
and rider. Upon a pad or flat saddle, with which the 
144 



HOW A BACK SOMERSAULT REALLY IS TURNED ON HORSE¬ 
BACK. THESOMERSAULTER IS SHOWN AT THE HALf-TURN 


H5 


SEE PAGES 146 & 176 













BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

horse moving around the center ring is equipped, two 
charming ladies, “ from the Urals,” directed by 
their equally charming mother, with perfect tech¬ 
nique and fine showmanship are displaying a series of 
statuesque poses, many of them difficult, and effected 
with graceful transitions. Their horse has been 
trained to the steadiest of gaits and is little else than 
a smoothly running machine bearing a diminutive 
stage or pedestal, with hardly other than a forward 
movement, around the ring. The intervening pad 
prevents horse and rider from seeming, indeed from 
being, integral the one with the other and, therefore, 
the turn for all its skill and rare beauty cannot be 
said to reach the heights of pure equestrianism. So, 
for our present purpose, we turn our attention to 
Ring Number Three. 

We note that the horse in this ring is loping around 
with a modicum of speed and with a distinctly dis¬ 
cernible up and down movement, having been broken 
in especially for the somersault rider. Observe him 
closely and you will see that the rider makes the rise 
or lift for the turn synchronize with the upward 
movement of the horse. A somersault, as has been 
noted, cannot be thrown from a yielding or sinking 
base. The somersault rider, therefore, accommo¬ 
dates himself to the up and down motion of the horse, 
which also is so trained in tempo and movement that 
the rider in throwing a succession of somersaults may 
146 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


alight upon the back of the horse at the right instant 
to take the rise. Contrary to the expressed opinion 
of certain authors whose works I have read and cer¬ 
tain artists with whom I have talked — authors writ¬ 
ing only from hearsay and who ought to know better, 
and artists fortunately for themselves stronger in 
technique than in theory — the forward movement 
of the horse is not to be reckoned with in throwing the 
somersault either forward or backward. The motion 
of the horse is imparted to the body of the rider who, 
if he jumps straight up, as he would upon the floor 
to do a “ spotter,” inevitably will land exactly where 
he started from, which is exactly what he wishes to 
do. The horse will not “ run out from under ” a 
rider who jumps straight into the air any more than 
the earth, which is moving many times faster than 
any horse upon it, will move out from under one who 
attempts a spotter upon the floor. If the earth did 
not impart its motion to a body upon it, as it does, and 
as a horse does to its rider, a horse could never be 
made to run in a circle and one attempting a somer¬ 
sault upon horse or floor might land many feet away 
from where he intended. What would this compli¬ 
cation do to Charley Fish’s “ backward back ”! 

Charles Fish, to whom I referred in the previous 
chapter as the most brilliant and daring of the old 
school, consistently performed a feat known as the 
“ backward back”; that is, he stood facing in the 

m 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

direction opposite to that in which the horse was mov¬ 
ing, with his toes near to the root of the horse’s tail. 
From this position he threw the back somersault, 
landing generally on the spot whence he started, or 
not more than two or three inches along toward the 
horse’s head. He played safe in doing this much of a 
“ fallback ” rather than a spotter, for there is always 
the tendency to gain in throwing the spotter, and the 
slightest gain from his position would have ended in 
a spill in the ring. That is why I wondered what the 
combined movement of horse, earth and solar sys¬ 
tem would have done to Charley Fish’s backward 
back had the laws of physics for the moment failed 
to operate! 

But now let us note what may be observed equally 
in the other rings, that is, the inverted or reversed 
racial expression referred to above, and let us com¬ 
ment somewhat at length upon the phenomenon. 
Our interest will not be lessened by the fact that we 
have had the Arabs so recently before us. We note 
that the horse is moving from right to left or in a 
direction opposite to the movement of the hands of 
a watch, that is, counter-clockwise. This is the 
Oriental movement and not quite what one would 
expect to find in the West. The direction, however, 
is the same as that taken on our race tracks where 
the horses move from right to left past the judge’s 
stand. Our foot races are run similarly 5 it is the 
148 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


direction taken upon the running track in the gym¬ 
nasium. 

I have analyzed this situation and have solved the 
problem satisfactorily to myself, except that I cannot 
reconcile it with the Arabian practice, which is to run 
horse and camel races in the direction opposite to ours. 
That is, the Moors and the Arabs race their animals 
and propel their bodies in their long stretches of 
tumbling, long stretches which are peculiar to their 
system, in a direction from left to right or with the 
hands of the clock. I have witnessed this not only 
under the big top but under the burning skies and 
on the yellow sands of the Sahara desert. Why this 
inversion of racial tendencies I cannot say. It is 
possible, I have sometimes thought, that the Arabs, 
who have no predilection for team work and who do 
not ride in serried ranks, find it easier to avoid acci¬ 
dental contact with their individually moving neigh¬ 
bors by keeping to the right. With us of the West, 
however, I have come to the conclusion that it is a 
matter of taking the easier way; of letting nature 
take its course. Our right side is the more fully de¬ 
veloped. In general our right leg moves with 
longer, stronger strides than does our left. To over¬ 
come this propensity to move in circles to the left we 
emphasize the left stride in training our soldiers. 
We force them to put the left foot forward, and the 
rhythm of the march is left, . . . ,left, . . . , left, 
149 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

right, left . . . and so on. These words, in this 
rhythm, are in the mouth of the drill sergeant in 
training raw recruits, and are read unconsciously by 
the well trained soldier into the sharp tap and lilting 
roll of the drum when the army is upon the march 
and wherever ordered and rhythmic movement is 
possible or essential. / 

Probably the Arabs have the same natural tend¬ 
ency as ourselves toward leftward movement, 
though, unlike us, they pass from behind to the right 
of a stationary or less rapidly moving person or ob- 
j ect. An age-long employment of this method taken 
to avoid unnecessary or unfortunate clash of moving 
bodies or forces may well account for the present 
tendency of the Arab to move in curves or circles to 
the right. What this may suggest to the student of 
racial movement and tendencies may not be alto¬ 
gether complimentary to us of the West, for it 
would seem to indicate that we have been and still 
are willing, in this particular matter at least, to let 
our innately unbalanced distribution of muscular 
powers dominate our course, while the Arab has over¬ 
come that weakness and, against that handicap, has 
finally made himself master of sustained and poeti¬ 
cal movement. This conclusion does not altogether 
coincide with our present notion of the Oriental Che 
sard , sard } which insofar as the Arab is concerned must 
150 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


be made to read, “ What will be, will be — as I will it 
to be.” 

This general clockwise movement of the West as 
against the counter-clockwise movement of the East 
is interestingly presented in a comparison of the man¬ 
ners and methods of writing and reading employed 
by these two grand divisions of the human race. In 
general the Oriental writes and reads from the bot¬ 
tom of the page upward in a direction from right to 
left, while the Occidental writes and reads from the 
top of the page downward and across in a direction 
from left to right. There would seem to be more 
of emotionalism, at least more of spiritual uplift, in 
this movement from bottom upward and more of 
mental poise in the movement from top downward. 
As a matter of fact, that is the psychological differ¬ 
ence between the East and the West. The Greek 
mood, which underlies the philosophy of the West, 
betokens a social mind imbued with the attributes of 
poise, balance and self-control; with a capacity for 
deed and thought enveloped in unity and serenity of 
design and purpose. This mood penetrates into the 
philosophy of the Middle Ages, although into this 
philosophy have been instilled certain ingredients 
which have filtered in from the Orient, from the 
East, and which color the forms of religion, civics 
and art. This Greek mood flows through the Mid- 
I5i 



152 


SEE PAGE 176 



IN RING NUMBER THREE 


die Ages into the Renaissance and even through into 
the modern age which, in spite of the seeming domi¬ 
nance of jazz, an emotional form not predicated in 
the wildest spiritual excesses of the Orient, is fash¬ 
ioned upon an underlying stratum of Greek idealism. 

If art is, as I conceive it to be, a spiritual reconcilia¬ 
tion to the struggle of life, which surely is the Greek 
ideal, and if acrobatics is, as also I conceive it to be, 
an integral and exalted form of art, and if the higher 
life demonstrates itself not in denying but in accept¬ 
ing and beautifying the struggle and, in beautifying, 
removing it from the material and bestial plane — 
then it must be recognized how deeply concerned in 
aesthetic expression are these innate and sharply dif¬ 
ferentiated racial movements 3 and we cannot be fan¬ 
tastic nor far afield in relating these movements to 
what we have witnessed in these rings in the matter 
of the Oriental and Occidental tumbling and the 
movement of horses as participating in an art expres¬ 
sion. One has only to contrast the brutal exhibition 
of the clumsy, frustrated movement and incompleted 
rhythm of the football field with the smoothly flow¬ 
ing and fully completed rhythms of the big top to 
realize that there is nothing of aesthetic idealism in 
the former, while in the latter is an expression of 
almost unalloyed beauty. 

Before we leave the study of racial and individual 
expression with its mathematical and spiritual impli- 
153 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

cations, let us view another demonstration high in air. 
The flying trapeze turn to which we were attracted 
earlier in this chapter was of a type known as a “ re¬ 
turn ” act j that is, a performer leaves his perch or 
pedestal, swings from a trapeze bar, is caught and re¬ 
turned to that bar from which he now swings himself 
up to the perch whence he started. Before the re¬ 
turn act had appeared, or at least before it had devel¬ 
oped its present dreamy, rhythmic conventions, an¬ 
other form of aerial artistry had been thrilling the 
public through the grace and daring of its exponents. 
This was and is known as the “ casting ” act, in vary¬ 
ing which a swinging trapeze may or may not be em¬ 
ployed ; whether present or not it is quite incidental. 

The casting act may be highly sensational in a man¬ 
ner which will be recognized as our description of it 
proceeds. The catchers, of whom there must be at 
least two, are at the same time throwers and the per¬ 
son of the flyer is passed back and forth between 
them. These catchers are supported by bars fixed 
horizontally and paralleling each other some fifteen 
to eighteen inches apart. The knees of the catcher 
are bent over one of these bars while his feet, toes up, 
are under the other. The leverage thus gained per¬ 
mits the catcher to cast the flyer with tremendous 
force in a direction forward or backward, under or 
over. In this rehearsal we shall see the flyer mount 
to a pedestal above two casters sitting upright side by 
154 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 

side facing him. Each caster grasps with his two 
hands the single hand or wrist which the flyer 
stretches downward toward him. As the flyer 
plunges out and up, his extended body is swung in a 
wide curve — struck from a center which is itself 
moving in the arc of a circle — underneath the casters 
and at the right instant of time at the right point in 
space he is released. At this point the flyer takes com¬ 
mand! He, traveling upward and outward, throws 
a triple back somersault, following with a half¬ 
twister to the hands of the catcher who awaits him. 
As at the completion of his revolutions his back is 
toward the catcher, this half-twister is necessary 
to bring flyer and catcher face to face, the position 
in which the wrist of the flyer can be most readily 
grasped. 

Note the technical difficulty as well as the beauty 
of this act. The backward turns are being thrown in 
a direction counter to that taken by the trapeze flyer j 
in fact, from the “ stance ” and in the direction in 
which the trapeze artist pirouettes to the swinging 
bar. Those of my readers who have done a “ flying 
Dutchman ” from the springboard into the pool, and 
I hope they are many, will readily appreciate what 
the turn involves. From his initial leap the flyer is 
traveling with his back to the direction of the move¬ 
ment, an extremely complicating factor in the equa¬ 
tion of the rhythm. A delicate judgment is all that 
155 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

can relate these factors of time and space to the 
spiritual ordinates and abscissas — no fixed physical 
base lines are here 5 all is feeling and emotion. The 
two casters must coordinate perfectly the factors of 
time and force or the flyer will be flung wide his 
course and even be made to crash against the frame. 
Harry Potter of the casting Potters — “ The Peer¬ 
less Potters ” — conceived this turn. Potter, ap¬ 
proaching three score and ten, has a brain teeming 
with turns which he diagrams and teaches to his boys. 
The position of hands, feet, body and head are indi¬ 
cated on these diagrams, which are so numerous that 
it would take all the casting teams in the world to 
materialize them all, because these shorthand tran¬ 
scriptions cannot be played at sight as can a musical 
score but take, as we earlier have seen, months or 
years for their mastery. Indeed, months may elapse 
before even technically trained fingers are able to find 
the keys! When keys are found and composition 
mastered, the turn is a concentrated essence of skill 
and beauty 5 the three somersaults and half-twister 
just described are completed in the time-space of one 
and one-fifth seconds. 

The “ throwover ” is a feature of the Potters’ as 
well as of certain other casting acts. In the throw- 
over the flyer is received by caster number two from 
caster number one hanging some eighteen feet away 
and, completely encircling caster number two and 
156 


IN RING NUMBER THREE 


his bars, is returned to caster number one (now 
catcher) with a somersault, a full twister or whatever 
movement the turn may call for. 

u The Four Casters,” a very clever team, appealed 
to me deeply in my early years when bodily move¬ 
ment was enough for me, regardless of the spiritual 
and racial implications involved. 

If we regard these performances in and above this 
Ring Number Three, high in air and upon the 
ground, as something other than demonstrations of 
physical prowess merely, if we regard them rather 
as expressions of individual and racial psychology and 
movement, we shall see how deeply they are related 
to life and how intimately they touch on our deep 
sentiments and emotions. 


157 













ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 



i6o 


SEE PAGE 174 





































ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


UPON THIS STAGE WE WITNESS SOME 
DELECTABLE AND SOME VERY STUPID FAK¬ 
ING AND ARE LED TO COMMENT UPON THE 
SAME AND TO QUESTION THE PROPRIETY 
OF FAKING AN ACT WITH INTENT TO DE¬ 
CEIVE OR OF UTTERING PALPABLY FALSE 
STATEMENTS WHEN ANNOUNCING TURNS. 
NOT ONLY IN WORD BUT ALSO IN PIC¬ 
TURE HAS THE CIRCUS OFFENDED. ITS 
ART IS PURE, BUT IN THE EXPLOITATION 
OF THAT ART IT IS POSSIBLE TO ERR, AND 
NOT ALWAYS THROUGH IGNORANCE. 


F AKERS HAVE fed upon human credulity from 
the infancy of the race. They early invaded the 
field of religion and, acting for personal gain and 
from lust for power, have so continued to work upon 
man’s superstitious nature. To the same purpose 
they have invaded the domain of politics — if indeed 
that domain were not established for their special 
benefit. To the same purpose they have entered the 
field of medicine, and in their lust for riches and 
power have devised a means for driving tandem the 
individual’s thirst for spiritual welfare and his 
craving for bodily health. Sometimes one is ahead 

161 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

on the track and sometimes the other. Now the faker 
is laying his heavy hand upon the art of the circus. 

Down through the ages the acrobatic art has been 
free from the machinations of the faker. The clown 
and mountebank have ever been in evidence with 
their fooling which, however, never was faking with 
intent to deceive. The accomplishments of the acro¬ 
bat were compounded of courage, daring, strength 
and agility. Any one of these factors might be bur¬ 
lesqued or caricatured, but it could not be faked. If 
one were to approach in a spirit of bravado a stuffed 
lion — that would be silly. If he were to tackle for 
some good and potent reason a real lion, that would 
take courage and the attitude could not be faked. 
The action might be faked were the lion so bound or 
enmeshed as to be helpless. Then the faked sem¬ 
blance of courage would be merely insulting to the 
lion and to the witness to the farce. 

In early Greece and in the Isle of Crete, when ac¬ 
robatics was an art and an exercise beloved by the 
people and acclaimed by them in the awards bestowed 
for successful performance, there was no faking in 
the ring when the infuriated bull bore down upon his 
agile tormentor. The consequent action was com¬ 
pounded, as noted above, of courage, daring, strength 
and agility. The bullbaiter did not thrust a dart into 
the neck of the onrushing beast when the sharp, 
deadly horns were lowered for a vicious toss. What 
162 


ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


the spectators witnessed and applauded then was a 
forward somersault on the part of the man, landing 
him on the back of the bull, if so the man chose, or 
landing him upright upon the ground so that he 
might further enrage the frustrated beast if that were 
the intent. The man’s purpose was not to dodge the 
bull — that was too easy — but to clear his immense 
bulk with a somersault from the ground. However 
undignified and evasive the action may have seemed 
to the bull, the spectators did not feel insulted, as 
they would have felt had the action ended in pre¬ 
meditated frustration. It is how I feel — that is, I 
feel insulted — when performance after perform¬ 
ance and year after year I see the same wire walker, 
to all outward appearance a a perfect lady,” after 
dancing with verve and grace upon the slender 
strand, fake a fall after a simple leap over a small 
table held above the wire by an “ accomplice.” The 
seemingly flustered u lady ” regains the wire and 
proceeds to do the trick, still with much unnecessary 
grimacing and apparent struggle to maintain equilib¬ 
rium, amid the plaudits and calls of encouragement 
of a horde of stupid spectators who have failed to 
note that year after year, performance after per¬ 
formance, the same trick is pulled off without a 
hitch at about the same time in rings One and Three 
under the same canvas. 

The juggler, whose performance in Ring Number 

163 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

Two we witnessed but a short while since, did a bit 
of very clever faking. You will remember that 
among the objects which he was so deftly directing 
along the interweaving orbits was a fragile glass dish, 
which at one turn seemed to have eluded his grasp $ 
with a suspended beat of the heart you awaited the 
crash! But he, gravely, rather nonchalantly, though 
with a twinkle in his eye which you may not have 
noted, stretched out his long arm and retrieved the 
seemingly doomed object within the hundredth part 
of a second of the moment at which you had expected 
it to hit the floor. That was clever faking and I love 
it for the thrill it gives me as well as for its demon¬ 
stration of perfect art. For, although it has been 
practiced hundreds of times, it gives what William 
Gillette, actor-dramatist, in an essay upon the tech¬ 
nique of the histrionic art, is pleased to call the “ illu¬ 
sion of the first time.” I have yet to see our friend 
the juggler “ miss it ” the first time. I have yet to 
see the “ lady ” on the wire do it the “ first time ”$ 
and that is what disgusts me. 

In striking contrast is the comical fall into the net 
by the clever clown (one third of him over each 
ring!) who assists in the triple bar performance at 
the top of the tent. This act is one replete with grace 
and beautiful movement, displaying necessarily high 
technical skill. The artists doing it u straight,” how¬ 
ever, never fall. That is left to the clown and before 
164 



A CATCHER. WHO IS NOT MURDEROUSLY OR SU1 Cl DALLY 
INCLINED - ENGAGES THE BAR IN THE MANNER SHOWN A&CNE 


165 


SEE PAGE 177 



BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

the fall comes every onlooker knows that the clown is 
due for it. He starts for the turn, hesitates, fearing 
seemingly that he is not going to make it, scuttles 
back to his bar and seems absolutely frustrated. He 
gathers up courage, tries again and misses. His ef¬ 
forts to right himself in the air and to maintain 
equilibrium in an upright position during the fall 
convulse the spectators, who applaud not the frus¬ 
trated achievement but the premeditated failure. 

This comical and faked fall brings me naturally to 
one equally a fake but not at all comical. Alfredo 
Codona, of the flying trapeze, whose triple somer¬ 
saults to his brother’s hands are world famous, made 
more than one miss without a doubt, even after he 
had achieved what may be called perfection in the 
turn. One of these misses, so the story goes, was so 
spectacular that he worked up certain elements of it 
into a stunt which now and again, but not very fre¬ 
quently, he would “ spring ” upon a throng already 
thrilled by the beauty and daring of his performance. 
I had never had occasion to witness this fake, indeed 
I never had heard of it until, one evening in the back 
yard before the show, one of my friends among the 
aerialists asked me if I ever had seen it and said, 
“ Alfredo is going to put it on this evening.” There¬ 
fore, from my seat j ust olf the center and in very good 
range, I watched for the fall. Somehow it seemed 
to me that the announcer was particularly unctious in 
166 


ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


his manner at that particular turn. Had I not known, 
in part at least, what was about to happen, I might 
have entertained an “ illusion of the unexpected ”; 
but my body, sensitive to movement, reacts to reality 
— and to unreality perhaps. There seemed to be a 
hesitation in the turn which was not in accord with 
the beauty and freedom of the previous movements. 
I was prepared for the fall into the net, but not for 
the climax. Codona struck, with intention, near the 
edge of the net and, throwing out his arms wildly as 
if seeking an object to grasp, bounded out of the net 
onto the floor of the ring, breaking his fall not by 
grasping the rim with his hand, but by catching it 
under his arm. It was all very deft and clever 5 but 
knowing that Alfredo was not hurt, nothing more 
serious, possibly, than that a few square inches of skin 
might be scraped from his chest and from the under 
side of his arm, I cast my glance aloft to where Lalo, 
the catcher, sat swinging quite unconcernedly in his 
trapeze while Mam’selle on the perch smiled as 
though a fall like that were of ordinary everyday oc¬ 
currence. I have been told that Leitzel, just previ¬ 
ous to her marriage with Codona, placed a ban on that 
act; and I am glad she did for, clever and startling 
as was the trick, it was a fake and, as such, unworthy 
of the great art of the Codonas. But let us not take 
too seriously nor set down as evidence of an insincere 
aesthetic nature Alfredo Codona’s boyish delight in 
167 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

such stupendous foolery as was that which might be 
called “ his fall from grace.” 

There are, however, on the circus other artists 
whose sensitiveness to their public precludes per¬ 
formances of this sort. Con Colleano is a case in 
point. It is not through his seeking that he is billed 
and announced as the “ great Con Colleano ”; and 
despite the tendency of publicity men to talk and 
write in terms of circus ballyhoo, Con Colleano is 
great. A more wonderful performer on the tight 
wire has not been seen in our day, for a more consum¬ 
mate artist of the silver strand has not, to my knowl¬ 
edge, appeared before a modern public. Just what, 
in detail, the ancient Greeks saw upon the wire which 
eclipsed or paralleled what we now see, it is difficult 
to say. We have no definite record of the detailed 
performance which, however, we do know enthralled 
the spectators at the games and circuses. We know 
from what has come down to us that the somersault¬ 
ing bullbaiter was clever — quite as clever as some of 
the performers of modern times! And we know that 
the Greeks, idealists as they were, could be satisfied 
with and acclaim only the best. 

But as to our modern wire workers. Other men 
quite possibly have done and are doing the single 
features of Con Colleano’s act j but of those whose 
performances I have witnessed in over sixty-five 
168 


ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


years of comprehensive circus experience, none has 
done the turns so consistently and with such beauty of 
form. He does not a concentrate on the back somer¬ 
sault,” as a magazine writer has stated. His for¬ 
ward somersault is featured, is given the spotlight; 
but he concentrates deeply, almost painfully to him¬ 
self, throughout his entire period upon the wire. 
He has to meet conditions the spectator cannot sense; 
conditions of light, of temperature, of noise and air 
currents, of sudden distraction near and more remote. 
To accomplish his somersaults, flips and pirouettes 
on the steel strand and right himself after every turn 
without the assistance of balancing pole or umbrella, 
he must have his extraordinarily sensitive body under 
almost superhuman control. It is inevitable that now 
and again he should miss a turn and leave the wire; 
and it is inevitable that sometimes in passing he 
grazes the wire with painful shock to muscle or 
nerve. This, however, is not what really hurts Con 
Colleano; what hurts is the fact that he knows that 
out among the spectators some pity and, worse, 
some profess to think that the loss of equilibrium 
and consequent fall were faked in order to impress 
upon the public the difficulty of the turn. Although 
my mind reverts to Codona’s byplay, I most deeply 
appreciate Con Colleano’s feeling that a consum¬ 
mate artist, always striving for perfection and know- 
169 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

ing the deep satisfaction which comes from perfect 
achievement, rests ill at ease under any impeachment 
of his integrity as an artist. 

There is in circus ballyhoo a tendency toward ex¬ 
aggeration which is amusing while it operates in the 
abstract but which may be annoying to the listener 
who feels that, concretely, his intelligence is being 
impugned. I sat, quite recently, through the per¬ 
formance of one big circus with a visiting clown from 
another big show and was interested in his comments 
as from one on the inside. The loud speaker was 
directing attention to what was going on upon the 
hippodrome track or was about to go on in or over 
one of the rings. “ That’s a lie,” murmured my 
friend with quiet detachment on at least three sepa¬ 
rate occasions; but he knew that I would entirely 
agree. We discussed the necessity for statements 
which implied that the people in the chairs and on 
the benches were a “ bunch of Rubes ” with no ex¬ 
perience of circuses and no memory. What, we 
asked each other, is to be gained by announcing that 
so-and-so “ is the only aerialist in the world to do a 
triple somersault to the hands of his brother.” And 
while this statement was being made under canvas 
(1931) it was for no specially good reason appear¬ 
ing in a book by a prominent circus writer who should 
and probably did know better. Would it not have 
been sufficient, in calling attention to the particular 
170 


ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


act we were about to witness as one of supreme skill, 
to state that probably it was unapproached today 
in beauty and finish? Both my friend of the circus 
and I would have been willing to grant that, al¬ 
though it was not so long ago that another aerialist, 
knowing that I was present at the performance with 
friends, sent a message that he would like to do us 
honor and would introduce into his act an extra 
turn, any one of his extras we might choose. As it 
had been some time since his triples had been fea¬ 
tured, we suggested that he throw one for us, which 
he did in the middle of the act, concluding, as was 
his custom, with the double and pirouette, a move¬ 
ment much more complicated and difficult than 
the triple. 

Ernest Clarke’s triples and his double and pirou¬ 
ettes were done, as you saw when you witnessed his 
turn over Ring Number Three, under absolutely 
unique conditions, the free trapeze coming back 
to the point at which it could be grasped by the 
returning flyer without the intervention of a third 
human agency. “ This turn,” the announcer used 
to say, “ has been accomplished by no other aerial 
performer,” and, for a novelty, that was true! But, 
even if we ignore conditions and take things as they 
seem, it is impossible to conceive of a more flowing, 
finished and beautiful turn in the air than that pre¬ 
sented by Alfredo Codona in his triple somersault 
171 



172 


SEE PAGES 4o & 186 



ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


to his brother’s hands and his double pirouetted 
return to his bar and his perch 5 and it is safe to say 
that Codona’s act in its entirety has never been sur¬ 
passed in grace and charm of movement. 

While we are writing of the flyers, it were well 
to give the party of the second part his just due. 
Without the perfect functioning of the catcher, or 
carrier, as he is sometimes called, there would be 
no graceful turn to a catch and no birdlike return to 
the perch by way of the swinging trapeze j for 
whether the swinging bar comes back in response to 
the impulse imparted by the leaper when he leaves 
it to make his turn, or whether it be dropped by a 
third party into the position in which it can be 
caught upon the return, that return depends more 
upon the strength, accuracy and judgment of the 
catcher than upon the agility of the leaper, however 
much of a factor that agility may be. No runner ever 
was “ thrown out ” at second base by a ball which 
bounced against a backstop — never thrown out un¬ 
less the judgment and accuracy of the catcher inter¬ 
vened! In this beautiful movement of the return 
the leaper is not flying, nor the flyer leaping, how¬ 
ever much appearances may seem to suggest it; but 
a performer, no longer leaper or flyer, is being hur¬ 
tled through the air. The catcher has on the instant 
transformed himself into a human catapult endowed 
with clear vision, strength and accurate judgment. 
173 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

The great artistic advantage accruing to the Codonas 
and the Clarkonians rests in the fact that through¬ 
out the entire existence of the teams the catcher has 
never been changed; neither has the leaper; and in 
both cases leaper and catcher are blood brothers 
descended through generations of circus folk. 

But in contemplating the beauty, skill and rare 
display of judgment in the matter of interrelated 
time and space as affecting the artists of the trapeze, 
we have lost sight, for the moment, of the unfortu¬ 
nate tendencies to do more than exaggerate in the 
ballyhoo, the tendency to misstate. This tendency, 
which has become a proclivity, extends to the pic¬ 
torial art of the circus. You will remember how as 
boys we used to study intently the pictures which 
had been posted in advance. After this study course 
it was inevitable that we should know what we were 
to behold and should look for in the act. I do not 
recollect that we were disappointed when we saw 
no little blacks bitten in two by alligators and no 
bushmen crushed and swallowed by constrictors. 
These banners may have frightened some fearful 
pickaninnies from the lot and even deterred some 
bearded countrymen from entering the kid show. 
Some of us were not long in coming to an appreci¬ 
ation of the full meaning of “ kid ” as applied to 
the freak show — the side show — really the front 
show, arriving first on the lot and leaving last and 
174 


ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


obstructing, with its crowds of wide-eyed and open- 
mouthed, the way to the main show. Even as boys 
we never took seriously the complaining attitude of 
the too literal who wanted their dime back because 
they didn’t see that-and that-and that! But we 
who had seen and tried things and knew what we 
ought to expect would stand before the posters and 
say among or to ourselves, “ They didn’t have that,” 
and “ They didn’t have that,” and “ They didn’t 
have that! ” All of which had been promised. 

We didn’t mind that the hippopotamus had “ died 
two days previously! ” on another pitch and all 
we were to see was its hide stuffed with straw 5 
but we did mind that there was no lady bareback 
somersault rider on the show when the heralds had 
pointed with particular pride to and the posters 
had flamingly and brazenly announced the especial 
appearance on this show of Mile. Bonnie Bonzo di¬ 
rect from a sensational season on the European con¬ 
tinent. We cared not a whit where she came from 
or whether she ever had been there. We knew she 
wasn’t here — and we looked into the matter only 
to learn that it was never intended that she should 
be here, as she was billed only to offset the drawing 
power of a popular equestrienne appearing on a 
rival show. 

I love the art of the circus but I am not particu¬ 
larly intrigued by some of the methods of the man- 
175 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

agement. We, boys or men, never saw a somersault 
turned on a horse in the manner depicted on the 
posters. We have seen “ layout ” backs and twist¬ 
ers thrown from the teeterboard and from the 
ground as units in a series, and we have thrown 
them, so we know the “ feeling,” but we never saw 
what the bills showed us: Charles Fish turning a 
somersault on a horse, either forward or backward, 
no one could say which, with body bent backward 
so that the soles of the feet were in proximity to the 
top of the head. But even as boys we never expected 
to see it, for, having tried for that form, we realized 
the difficulty if not the impossibility of its accom¬ 
plishment. Another feat, involving wonderful feet, 
presented alluringly by an u artist,” we never saw. 
The catcher, swinging far out on the trapeze and 
hanging merely by the toes, is essaying to grasp 
the flyer who has just u let out ” from a somersault 
from his bar. I hope they have a net under them 
although none is shown. The posters generally 
show the catcher hanging head down with the 
trapeze bar in the bend of the knee. One essaying 
a catch in this position would need the net beneath 
him! 

Until the “ Flying Codonas ” were fixed on can¬ 
vas in a picture exhibited in the American section of 
the Century of Progress Art Show at the Chicago 
176 


ON STAGE NUMBER FOUR 


Art Institute in the summer of 1934, no painter 
of sorts, high or low, and never a circus lithogra¬ 
pher, had ever shown the catcher as he really hangs 
with the bar in front and his legs engaging the ropes 
of the trapeze. But here in this picture all likeness 
to the Codonas or to any other known aerialists 
fades away. What should be the lithe and beauti¬ 
fully though heavily muscled bodies of the bird- 
men are cast in the mold of truck drivers, while the 
colors in which they are depicted suggest, rather, 
trench diggers on a muddy lot; so little appreciation 
had the artist of harmonic relations between color 
and functional environment! Perhaps the real 
attitude of the catcher can never become popular 
in pictorial art, for it is too unimaginative. It seems 
not to coincide with the pictorial artist’s idea of the 
rhythmic proprieties; that is, with his ideas of the 
requirements of cc rhythmic line ” filling space! Of 
flowing, living, bodily rhythm the painter standing 
at his easel and the illustrator bending over his 
board have no conception. 

After all, we must not take the joyous faker 
seriously. It is only the serious faker who is to be 
so taken, and even he not too seriously; he isn’t 
worth it. The serious faker must believe that he 
is fooling all the people all the time, else his sense 
of humor would compel him, now and then, to 
177 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


change his mode of attack, to lay aside his long 
black frock upon occasion. But we forget! The 
serious faker has no sense of humor 5 that, as it 
affects fakers, is the possession of the joyous faker 
alone, and our own sense of humor will carry us a 
long way with him. 


178 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 



i8o 


SEE PAGE 186 





ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK WE WITNESS 
A BEWILDERING VARIETY OF TURNS. 
AROUND THE TRACK THE PAGEANT MOVES 
AND THE RACES ARE RUN; ALONG IT THE 
ARABS GYRATE, CLOWNS CAVORT AND 
GESTICULATE AND HORSES PRANCE, REAR 
AND KNEEL. ACROSS THE TRACK THE 
LEAPERS SPEED TO THE RUN FOR THEIR 
SPRINGBOARD TURNS IN AIR OVER HORSES, 
BANNERS AND ELEPHANTS; AND ACROSS 
THE TRACK, NOT SO FREE IN MOVEMENT, 
THE “CATS” SLINK THROUGH THE RUN¬ 
WAYS FROM THEIR DENS INTO THE STEEL 
ARENA AND BACK AGAIN TO THEIR DENS. 
THE HIPPODROME TRACK IS ALIVE WITH 
LOVELY FORM, FASCINATING MOVEMENT 
AND SCINTILLATING COLOR. 


AS MOVEMENT upon the hippodrome track 
XjL is not restricted by any single racial predi¬ 
lection but proceeds along and around in either di¬ 
rection, across and back, and even up and down in 
the third dimension as meets the will of the per¬ 
former, we shall view various of the demonstrations 
as individual reactions to the spirit of art, keeping 
in mind our own initial conception of a work of 

181 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

art as resulting primarily from activities undertaken 
for the love of the doing, but not ignoring the sec¬ 
ondary consideration of the effect upon others. It 
is solely in the light of the first consideration that we 
have viewed the work of the aerialists, contortionists, 
equestrians, jugglers and tumblers, here setting 
them down alphabetically rather than in the order 
of precedence as established in the circus social 
and artistic register. In the work of the above-men¬ 
tioned artists the idea of the effect upon others is 
minimized. But to the clowns or “ Joeys ” upon 
the track the effect, the altogether instantaneous 
effect, upon the spectators is paramount. 

Every good clown is by nature and instinct a 
“ show-off ” as well as an artist in so far as he does 
his work beautifully and with the idea of perfection. 
An acrobat can be imagined as enjoying his work 
alone by himself or in the company of others simi¬ 
larly occupied. But not so the clown ; his life and 
enjoyment lie in the quick response and approbation 
of the spectators. While there is virtue in a crowd, 
the real clown needs but the presence of one sympa¬ 
thetic soul, as you, dear male reader, well know if 
you will but call to mind your frantic antics on the 
curb and hitching post to gain the attention and ap¬ 
probation of the — temporarily — one and only 
little morsel of u sugar and spice ” in the world 
swinging on her father’s gate. But the real clown 
182 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


sees in each individual of the throng the delectable 
image to which his heart goes out; and one can well 
imagine the height of his elation if the response is 
cordial or the depth of his disappointment, amount¬ 
ing to despair, should approbation be withheld. In 
the latter case only the clown who is artist as well 
can rise out of the slough of despond, buoyed by the 
inner contemplation of, and satisfaction in, a job 
well done. 

The acrobatic clown who, as an individualized 
circus entity, has vanished from the purlieu of the 
top along with the bespangled bareback somersault 
u champion,” held in artistic suspension in about 
equal measure the love of the doing and the effect 
on others; although the former must have predomi¬ 
nated in the nature of harlequin and pantaloon whose 
grace in the one case and buffoonery in the other we 
used so keenly to enjoy as we watched them indulg¬ 
ing in flipflops, somersaults and twisters upon the 
track. But times have changed and no more do 
our nerves tingle delightedly with the swish and 
crack of the slapstick deftly and lightly handled; 
our ears throb painfully in the detonation of the 
bomb set off by the blow of a heavy mallet on the 
posterior of a stooping tramp, or on the bloated turn- 
turn of a windy trombone player. However, the 
spirit of art still hovers over clown alley and directs 
certain of the quieter and even more boisterous 

183 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

manifestations of unconquerable jollity and good 
spirits. 

Watch Fred and Doodles as they come meander¬ 
ing nonchalantly along with gun and gamebag, now 
and then scanning the landscape as for game. Be¬ 
hind them toddles their little dog, Pal, with head 
encased in a rabbit mask through the eyeholes of 
which he sees perfectly. Pal stops at some signal 
we do not catch. Having advanced a few paces the 
hunters halt and seemingly listen. They turn and 
sight the rabbit which, as the gun is raised, rises 
upon his haunches, lifting his forepaws in pleading 
gesture. Isn’t there a bit of a lump in your throat 
when, as the cap explodes, the little animal falls 
over with a fine imitation of a creature in its death 
throes and permits himself to be picked up limp and 
seemingly lifeless and deposited in the gamebag? 
Of course you know he slips out of the bag all alive; 
and, after a due interval, the scene is re-enacted 
farther down the track. 

Have not your sensibilities and perhaps your 
risibilities been touched at the sign of the steadfast¬ 
ness of inanimate things in the presence of human 
perverseness or reverseness of mind, as is exempli¬ 
fied in Bluch’s contribution to the “ walk around ”? 
A carpenter, with hammer in one hand and saw in the 
other, starts out carrying a long plank balanced on 
the top of his head. He has gone but a short dis- 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


tance when, realizing that he has come without a 
plane or chalk and line, perhaps, he about faces and 
retraces his steps. The plank, however, remains 
constant to its original objective and keeps in its 
proper plane with eye always upon that point ahead 
where final destiny will be met. Has not a rather 
sad smile permeated your being as you have watched 
that steadfast plank? However, Bluch says of him¬ 
self that he is a comedian rather than a clown. The 
plank, then, is a tragedian! 

Two chaps, whose identity has escaped me, for 
quite a period afforded me real enjoyment, for their 
act, in addition to its amusing content, was delight¬ 
fully and truthfully pantomimed. Papa Clown, 
Mama Clown and Baby Clown, an effigy in a large 
perambulator, are the dramatis personae. Baby 
needs food — Mama takes Baby from perambulator 
and holds it on lap. Papa gets huge bottle contain¬ 
ing a white liquid and with a foot pump empties it 
into Baby’s rubber stomach. Mama lays Baby across 
her knees and at a sign Papa hands Mama a huge 
folded cloth from the perambulator. Mama care¬ 
fully unfolds the white cloth to its full extent, delib¬ 
erately folds it on the diagonal and, with a clever 
gesture, which holds in suspense those among the 
spectators who are conversant with the technique of 
the nursery — and few are not — she swings the 
scarf across her shoulders, replaces the infant in the 

185 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

perambulator, and the duo and their belongings 
move on to green fields and pastures new. The pa¬ 
tent fact, which is not disguised nor sought to be dis¬ 
guised under the feminine garb, that Mama Clown 
is a man masquerading, contributes no little to the 
humor of the act. 

I cannot leave the clowns without expressing re¬ 
gret that conditions no longer warrant the explosions 
of one Chesty’s infectious laughter or permit of his 
exhibiting on one of the stages his remarkable hand¬ 
stands and one-hand dance. But the whole show 
cannot be given over to clowning, even to acrobatic 
clowning, however appealing the latter may be to 
some who are not averse to seeing real poetry pre¬ 
sented by Darby and Joan, Pierrot and Columbine, 
or by the Court Fool in motley. I confess that I 
watch the antics of the clowns with somewhat more 
than an impersonal interest, for in the back of my 
mind still floats a filament of my early ambition to be 
an acrobatic clown — to be this moment on the 
speeding horse; then up among the lofty bars; then 
in the array of tumblers in the ring; then in the 
leaps! But it was not to be. 

Almost if not quite from the beginnings of the 
circus in America, “ the leaps ” was a most popular 
turn. For the present generation of circus goers the 
act would be novel. Recently there has been a de¬ 
mand for the reappearance of the leapers on the 
186 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


show. That it is a dangerous turn, at least to those 
essaying the a triple,” was evidenced in the old days 
by the number of accidents, not a few of which were 
fatal. Up to and including the “ double ” the act is 
fairly safe to be indulged in and its beauty appeals 
both to performer and spectator, the latter fairly 
feeling himself to be floating in air as he regards the 
turn with sympathetic interest. However appeal¬ 
ing the leap may be to the spectator there is a draw¬ 
back in it for the performer, for the pounding the 
body and joints get from the force of the landing, 
even when successfully accomplished, stiffens them 
and in a measure incapacitates the artist for the 
lighter and more delicate forms of the art. 

The body, as it is propelled from the springboard, 
or la batoute as it is technically called, may be di¬ 
rected into numerous and varied beauty-inspiring 
paths. I have already suggested the feeling engen¬ 
dered in the performer by the single or the double 
somersault from the springboard. The leap may be 
varied to take the form of the swan-dive concluding 
with a balled up or a layout somersault, a balled up 
twister, a layout twister, a somersault followed by 
a twister, and others. One of the most appealing 
turns is made by a leaper in “ Rube ” costume carry¬ 
ing a closed umbrella. It consists of a twisting lay¬ 
out somersault at the apex of which, high in the air, 
the performer opens up his umbrella and is parachu- 

187 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

ted gracefully to the ground. The mixture of grace, 
crudity, innocence and daring presented in this turn 
makes it always poignant in its appeal. As the 
leaper opens up his umbrella he turns his head and 
winks at the spectators. For one who knows the art, 
in that seemingly slight gesture the act becomes 
doubly entrancing. The leaper has not let that turn 
of the head interfere with the control of the body or 
the rhythm of the movement; and yet it is through 
a slight motion or turn of the head that the accom¬ 
plishment of the somersault, backward or forward, 
and of the twister is effected. A movement of the 
arms supplements the motion of the head. This fac¬ 
tor adds another complication to the intricate 
rhythm of the leaper, for as he turns his head he 
makes an extraneous movement with his arms and 
hands, opens the umbrella or places it into position 
to open of itself. 

How involved this movement is we may discern 
from a slight study of the technique of the somer¬ 
sault in its simple or primary form; that is, when 
the turn from feet to feet is effected normally and 
without frills. The performer stands in a “ sink,” 
that is, with head and body erect though with the 
knees slightly bent, and jumps straight up from the 
ground. In jumping he lifts with his shoulders to 
give him height in the air. At the top of the rise and 
before the turn the body becomes perfectly relaxed 
188 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


so as to respond immediately to whatever impulse 
may be imparted to it. Before the head is at the 
highest point in air the feet are drawn up bring¬ 
ing the knees to the chest. The arms are bent with 
the hands nearly up to the shoulders. They are 
where they readily can grasp the legs near the knees. 
The body is well up in the air now and loosely in the 
form of a ball; “ balled up ” it is called. From this 
position either front or back somersault may be 
thrown. If a back is intended the head is thrown 
quickly backward, and the hands acting in conso¬ 
nance grasp the knees, or the legs just below the 
knees, and pull them sharply up toward the body. 
This combined movement turns the balled up body 
completely around so that the feet are again under¬ 
neath, and then the body is stretched out straight 
and an upright landing upon the feet is made. The 
motion of grasping the legs with the hands is called 
the u tuck ” j straightening out the body and extend¬ 
ing the legs is known as “ letting out.” If the front 
or forward somersault is desired the process is re¬ 
versed. With the body balled up high in air, the 
head is thrown sharply forward while the hands with 
a downward motion push the knees, holding them, 
however, until time for the let out; a forward revo¬ 
lution of the body is thus effected and, when com¬ 
pleted, the legs are stretched out simultaneously 
with the straightening of the body and an upright 
189 



t 


A SOMERSAULTED PASS IN AIR. THECATCttER .AT THE RIGHT, HAS 
JUST RELEASED THE FIRST FLYER WHO WILL GRASP THE DISENGAGED 
BAR AS-THE SECOND ELVER LEAVES VETO MAKE A FORWARD TURN 


190 


SEE PAGE 195 



ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


landing made. In order to effect the twister the 
head has to be turned sharply to one side as well as 
backward, the arms and shoulders impelling in the 
same direction. 

From this meager analysis of the movements and 
correlations involved in the simple somersault we 
may gain some notion of what the extrinsic move¬ 
ment of the head in turning to wink at the spectators, 
together with that abnormal use of arms and hands 
in manipulating the umbrella, might have done to 
that turn in the air, to the bodily harm of the leaper, 
had not his body and brain been under perfect con¬ 
trol of the spirit. Spirit is, as I have said, a trite, 
almost a cant word, but in this connection there is 
no substitute for it. In other words, there is no 
spiritual synonym! 

Let us, however, before proceeding with the 
springboard leapers, go a little farther into the tech¬ 
nique of the somersault as regards control, that is, 
the ability of the performer to alight upon a given 
spot or in a given position; this especially in respect 
to the turn from the ground or upon horseback. If 
one relies too much upon the lift of the shoulders 
to gain height, strain may be put upon the body in 
such manner as to impede the turn and to lose per¬ 
fect control. The “ belly ” should be lifted with 
the shoulders and not be dragged by them. The 
body to be entirely under control must revolve about 
191 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

the center of gravity and not around the shoulders 
or head. The seat of the will is in the brain in the 
cranium; the seat of the emotions is in the brain in 
the belly where also is located the eye of the spirit. 
This is an Oriental, or at least a Japanese, conception. 
The early Greeks held theories as to the abdominal 
brain; at least, Hippocrates found the subject con¬ 
troversial. In ancient Hebrew lore the seat of com¬ 
passion, one of the richest of the emotions, is in the 
bowels. The Japanese archer shoots from the mid¬ 
dle, sighting instinctively from that part of his anat¬ 
omy. The American Indian raises his weapon and 
in sighting uses the brain back of the eye of flesh. 
That is the manner of the Occident except that the 
American gunman shoots from the hip, well know¬ 
ing that in the extra moment necessary to raise the 
gun to the level of the eye his opponent may and 
probably will “ get the drop on him.” This matter 
in general may, however, be more properly dealt 
with in a consideration of the psychology of the 
emotions than in an outline study of the technique 
of an art. 

I have spoken above of the danger involved in 
the triple turn to a landing on the ground. It is the 
intention of one leaping from the springboard to 
alight upon a mattress which is placed where it may 
break the force of the impact in landing. The mat¬ 
tress, unlike net or trampoline, is not resilient, 
192 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


sending the body upward on the rebound, but is 
intended to be just soft enough to break the force 
of the impact of the body coming at so great a speed 
from so great a height, and just firm enough to 
afford a good footing. To miss the mattress after a 
turn in the air would be to shatter bones in a crash. 
To overturn, so as to pitch forward upon striking 
the mattress, would be to be thrown to the ground 
with such violence that the neck might be broken. 
This has been known to happen. Except in the case 
of a few favored mortals with supernormally fine 
organisms and clear heads, sense of direction and 
location, while functioning through two revolutions 
of the body in air, is lost at the conclusion of the 
third and power of control in alighting or catching 
has disappeared. The catcher is always there to 
assist when the aerialist has made his turn, but no 
catcher may intervene in the case of the leaper who 
must have his rhythm complete in his mind and 
know that his body is going to obey his commands 
implicitly before he can essay his turn with assurance 
of a safe landing. The turn from the springboard 
is always taken in a forward direction: a front som¬ 
ersault or a forward twister or half twister. The 
turn from the flying trapeze is normally the reverse. 

No matter how well established the rhythm of 
the prospective turn may be in the brain of the per¬ 
former, judgment of time and space must enter in 
193 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

as an absolutely necessary concomitant. Sight, up 
to a certain point, is an important factor in the deli¬ 
cate equation of judgment. However, sight fails 
to function in most cases after the second revolution 
and from then on ability to control loses a powerful 
ally. Judgment having become impaired, the per¬ 
former is apt to hold the tuck too long or to let out 
too soon for an artistic or even a safe conclusion to 
the turn. The trapeze flyer has an advantage over 
the springboard leaper, and especially over the per¬ 
former throwing a forward on the wire, in that in 
the back, which is the aerialist’s natural turn, the 
objective is in sight almost from the beginning, 
while in the front somersault the body of the per¬ 
former is in the line of vision and he cannot see 
what he is to catch or where he is to land until the 
revolution of the body is almost completed. Then 
the brain must act quickly or the tuck will be held 
too long or the let out accomplished prematurely. 
It is here that innate sense of rhythm and accurate 
judgment born of experience come to the aid of the 
artist. 

I have said that the back somersault is the one 
normally thrown by the trapeze artist; this applies 
to the flyer swinging by the hands as he leaves the 
bar at the end of the arc. As that turn in its simple 
form from trapeze or horizontal bar is known as 
the “ fly-away ” the person accomplishing it may 
194 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


quite appropriately be called the flyer. There is, 
however, a turn in which the artist may with equal 
propriety be called the leaper, the other of his two 
designations, and that is when he shoots out over 
or vaults the bar head foremost face downward for 
a straight dive or for a forward somersault. This is 
the movement employed by the second of two 
flyers, who follows immediately on the released 
trapeze the first, who has back-somersaulted to a 
catch and who is returned by the catcher to the bar 
as the second leaves it, himself to be caught as the 
catcher completes his up-swing. This cc pass in air ” 
to be entirely satisfying must include a somersault 
on the part of flyer number two, the one passing 
over. A clever team known as the u Flying Thrill¬ 
ers ” used habitually to present the pass with flyer 
number two throwing a normal back somersault 
rather than the forward over. From the leaper’s 
position on the bar Alfredo Codona used regularly 
to throw the single and, now and again, the double 
forward somersault to the catcher. This double 
forward is not attempted by the generality and, 
as the reader may conjecture, betokens the presence 
of a highly supersensitive organism. To the aerial- 
ists themselves, as to the cognoscenti , this double 
forward is more difficult of accomplishment and, 
all the elements considered, more beautiful than the 
triple back and more rarely seen or attempted. 

195 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

With my love of rhythm and admiration of 
those who have absolute control of the body during 
a turn, I have no sympathy or liking for the clumsy 
act which recently has gained great applause from 
the groundlings; that is the triple from a teeter- 
board into a stuffed chair supported on the shoul¬ 
ders of a third party. The heaped-up landing in the 
chair is ugly at the best, and the only person to 
deserve consideration is the one who holds the chair 
and relates its position to the movement of the turn. 
Its danger to limb is the only factor to recommend 
that turn to the mob. The element of danger inher¬ 
ing in certain circus acts brings distress to many peo¬ 
ple who otherwise would enjoy the art. To a timid 
and supersensitive spectator danger is present when 
none really exists; that is, none which we do not 
all encounter in the commonplace acts of our daily 
lives. People who ride on railway trains and in 
buses and automobiles, without head buffers and 
protective garments of some sort, display defective 
powers of logic in demanding safety nets under¬ 
neath all acts in mid-air. 

In the repertoire of the double trapeze there is, 
to the best of my knowledge, but one movement in 
which one partner is not grasping either the other 
partner or the bar firmly by hands or legs. There 
is a “ swing up ” of the female hanging head down¬ 
ward, her legs intertwined in the arms of the male, 
196 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


in which her hands have to grasp his after his have 
disentangled themselves from her legs. I do not 
care to see that particular turn but it is not so ex¬ 
tremely dangerous. It does not compare in danger 
with the u cut off ” at the ends of the wide arc made 
by the flying rings, yet I myself performed this feat 
for years in succession over a bare gymnasium floor 
with never a fall nor ever with even the slightest 
sense of danger. The act was learned on the mat 
from vertically hanging rings 5 the rings were made 
to swing slightly at first, then more and more, and 
at last in an arc of oyer twenty feet when confidence 
in power of control had been established. To be 
sure, the lovely Leitzel fell to her doom by the 
breaking of an inconspicuous piece of her apparatus, 
and she might have been saved had the net been 
underneath. So might many a pedestrian who has 
slipped to death on a banana peel or a slippery pave¬ 
ment had he worn an inflated rubber suit against 
such contingency or had a lackey been following 
with a scoop net. The thing which her friends 
feared for Leitzel did not eventuate; that is, blood 
poisoning from her injured arm. 

As the name of the fair artist has flowed from 
our pen, let us go back over a short period and, in 
memory, again behold her crossing the Hippo¬ 
drome track from the stage entrance (the back 
door to her) in the glare of the spotlights, to wind 
197 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


her way upward along the loosely hanging rope 
in lovely and intricate convolutions to her work at 
the top of the tent. It can be said with slight fear 
of contradiction that the circus has furnished no 
finer combination of effective showmanship and 
perfectly adapted body than was exhibited by Lil¬ 
lian Leitzel. Few in circus history have come into 
the spotlight with more of grace and charm and few 
have emerged with greater acclaim than did this 
artist of the tops through a course of many com¬ 
manding years. Her performance was given in 
two distinctly different parts. The first was an ex¬ 
quisite gymnastic turn on the Roman rings high in 
air. It was, as noted above, the breaking of the 
attachment of one of these rings which caused her 
death. The second and concluding turn was a stunt 
which, though once her mother’s specialty, Leitzel 
for many years made her own, with no imitators 
in the field. Briefly, the turn, called the “arm 
plange,” consisted of a full swing of the body 
around the shoulder as a pivot, with one hand free 
while the other gripped a loop which encircled the 
wrist. This revolution was repeated scores of times 
in succession without a break in the rhythm and 
finally became so monotonous as to dull for me, at 
least, whatever of interest may have attached to it at 
the start. The interest soon resolved itself into 
“ how many times will she do it? 55 — “ how long can 
198 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


she keep it up? ” When that point was reached art, 
of which otherwise Leitzel was the embodied spirit, 
had, to my notion, vanished. 

In her performance on the Roman rings Leitzel 
had no rival, no imitator. Nature and her own rare 
personality had protected her in that. Dainty feet, 
tremulous and twinkling, and exquisitely formed 
lower limbs and hips, which while seemingly in 
proportion were really abnormally small for her 
wonderfully developed chest and shoulders, gave 
her a body over which, in an act like that, she had 
absolute mastery. Standing on her hands in the 
rings with dainty feet in air above her, or pendant, 
or in shifting postures, she was always in command 
and, in whatever position, could rest or move with 
poise, with grace, with charm. The same peculiar 
physical structure which so helped with the rings 
gave her an advantage over others when it came to 
ascending or descending the pendant rope by bodily 
twists and convolutions. In all this, to my thinking, 
she had no rival. But the announcement of the arm 
swing as u a test of endurance ” carried a challenge 
and competitors entered the field. Wiry young 
aerialists, charged with a will to u endure,” kicked 
up their feet and let their bodies flop down. These 
girls would kick up, sometimes over, some ninety 
or a hundred times, the number to which Leitzel 
had confined her act during these last few years 
199 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

when the loop had eaten into the flesh of the wrist 
making the turn for her one of excruciating pain 5 
she, however, never let the spectators guess this. 
LeitzePs form in this particlar turn was so distinctly 
her own and her showmanship so brilliant that 
many circus lovers found the imitations on other 
shows verging on the ludicrous, especially when 
LeitzePs mannerisms were copied. No art lover 
cares for a copy and no mere copy can permanently 
endure. I have sometimes wondered if even Leit¬ 
zePs superb presentation of this particular turn 
would have much impressed the public had it not 
been for the intensive featuring of the act and the 
ballyhoo which accompanied it. Her work on the 
rings always received the applause to which it was 
justly entitled and without artificial stimulation by 
the management. 

Shortly after LeitzePs death, Mabel Ward, an 
altogether charming aerialist and member of a 
noted family, who not so many months later became 
the wife of Tom Mix of circus, movie and Wild 
West fame, took occasion to demonstrate her powers 
of endurance on the show with which she was then 
connected. Before an outstanding body of “ Circus 
Fans ” * gathered in the middle section of the grand- 

* The Circus Fans Association of America is a national body of 
altruistic non-professionals who love the circus as an institution 
and wish to see it perpetuated. From its declaration of principles, 

200 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


stand, the young woman in well nigh perfect form 
threw her suspended body around in circles after 
Leitzel’s manner. It seemed almost that she could 
not stop. A sensitive child in the first row clung to 
her mother appealingly and cried, “Oh, Mother! 
can’t they take her down? ” But it was not neces¬ 
sary to take her down, for she descended gracefully 
of her own volition, with clear head and body well 
in hand, after completing, according to my count, 
252 full turns. As the press recorded but 251 turns 
we will let it stand at that. Leitzel herself once 
told me that she had done the turn 243 times. 
A well posted circus fan informed me that Leitzel 
had given 249 turns as her record j and my comment 
was that if she were counting or listening to the 
count, it was psychologically impossible, for there 
is magic in the even number and Leitzel, being 
within one, would have made a superhuman effort 
to reach it. I may be considered a bit insensate in 

presented by this writer at the San Antonio Convention in 1932, the 
following excerpts appear on the reverse of the membership cards: 

“The Circus Fan will at all times do his utmost: First — to 
create a true understanding and appreciation of the educational and 
recreative value of the circus. Second — to help himself and others 
to an understanding and appreciation of the art of the big top. 
Third — to make himself, whenever and wherever desired by them, 
a point of contact between the people of the circus, artists or execu¬ 
tives, and the outside world. Fourth — to exert himself to the 
end that the circus may exist and continue to exist among us as a 
social, educational and recreative factor necessary to a fully rounded 
and joyous existence.” 


201 




* 

REDUCED FROM AN ILLUSTRATION BY FERNANDO HARVEY LUNGREM. LATER 
TO BE WELL KNOWN AS A "PAINTER OF DESERT SCENES IN THE FAR-WEST 
ONE OF FIVE TO EMBELLISH AN EPIC POEM WRITTEN AROUNDTHE 
STUDENT'FORE PAUGH INCIDENT WHICH WOVE ITSELF INTO LEGEND 
AND THEN BECAME HISTORY- FROM THE UNIVERSITY PALLADIUM'OF 1876 


202 


SEE PAGE 218 








ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


being bored by this turn by whomsoever done, but 
I feel fortified in my position by the remark of one 
of the leading equestrian directors that any of these 
girls could do the turn easily three hundred times, 
but it was not permitted on the show as it would 
draw the act out tediously. 

What the performers are not permitted to do 
opens up a tender subject to the lover of the art of 
the circus. When an act has hit the popular fancy, 
a conservative management rarely will consent to 
any change in its routine, not even though the 
change would quite surely enhance the popularity 
of the turn. Early in the book you were reminded 
of the thrill we got in the old one-ring circus when 
the inebriated “ gent ” in the benches challenged 
the bareback rider in the ring ; how, on being invited 
to make good his dare, he drunkenly bestrode the 
horse, fell off, was reinstated 5 how he pulled him¬ 
self together, held his balance, began to divest him¬ 
self of his ragged raiment and finally, with all the 
signs of inebriation vanished, stood resplendent in 
his spangled tights, the champion somersault rider 
of the show! That trick would not be so effective 
under the present huge top with its three rings in 
which three tramps are cutting up antics simultane¬ 
ously, falling off and dodging horses, trying to keep 
breeches from coming down or shirts from pulling 
up. And never a somersault on the horses from 
203 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

one of them! The more’s the pity! Clarence 
Bruce riding straight and clowning, in a family 
equestrian turn of more than common merit, divests 
himself of his high hat and dress coat after disport¬ 
ing himself as an inebriated club fellow and throws 
a series of somersaults on the back of his running 
horse j but he does not go far enough to suit me 
and is permitted to go no farther. When one con¬ 
siders the grace with which he accomplishes this 
feat one can only wonder with what acclaim the 
turn would be received were he to divest himself 
of all conventional raiment and appear in the span¬ 
gled tights of the old time circus rider. One of that 
sort has not been seen in the ring since Percy Clarke 
used to fill in for May Wirth when an accident, as 
one would now and again, kept that brilliant and 
charming equestrienne temporarily out of the ring. 
That “little lady,” as the old time clown used to 
refer to the premiere equestrienne, not only had 
personal charm and a fine sense of showmanship but 
rode and somersaulted as perhaps no other woman 
ever did. 

One hears too frequently the pitiful wail that 
there are no riders nowadays comparable to the 
brilliant riders of the past, such as those cited in an 
earlier chapter. But not one of those men ever 
threw a full twister from one running horse to an¬ 
other as is done today by Lucio in the stunning 
204 


ON THE HIPPODROME TRACK 


Cristiani act, or the back from horse to horse as has 
been accomplished by at least four riders, one a 
woman, during the past two decades and is being 
done regularly in the ring today. No! the golden 
days of circus equestrianism are not in the past but 
are gleaming brilliantly in the here and now. 

The nets have been spread for the final aerial 
act. Up there aloft the performers, over all three 
rings, dressed in yellow tights, are fluttering like 
canaries from perch to bar, to hand, to bar, to perch. 
The air is full of their dreamy movement, inter¬ 
rupted now and then by a quick spasmodic twister or 
pirouette to a catch, as if the bird had escaped to 
safety the downward sweep of a not too friendly 
hawk. Individuality shows aloft. Over Ring Num¬ 
ber Two the flyer is moving in rhythmic curves 
which flow gently, smoothly and gracefully the one 
into the other like the successive passages of the 
Spring Song . There, over the end ring, the “ Fly¬ 
ing Thrillers ” are phrasing their living music with 
each separate movement of somersault merging into 
pirouette picked out as clearly and distinctly as are 
the notes in a brilliant rendition of the Pizzicato 
Polka . The band over at the stage entrance is slum¬ 
bering over its instruments, the air is filled with 
the dreamy poetry of sound and motion and before 
the soft cadences die away we betake ourselves again 
to the quiet friendliness of the back yard. 

20 5 
























I 


IN THE BACK YARD 



208 


SEE PAGE 2lo 






















IN THE BACK YARD 


TODAY THE SUNJIS SHINING IN THE BACK 
YARD. WE SIT AND GOSSIP WITH “KINKERS” 
AND1 CLOWNS AND WITNESS HISTORY IN 
THE MAKING AND IN THE UN-MAKING. 
BEFORE THE SUN SINKS INTO THE WEST — 
TO RISE AGAIN AS WE KNOW —WE SEE 
THE WALLS OF THE COOKHOUSE DROP 
AND NOTE MOVEMENTS WHICH WOULD 
SEEM TO PRESAGE DEPARTURE. WE HAVE 
SEEN THE SHOW OR THAT PART WHICH. IN 
OUR PRESENT MOOD. PARTICULARLY IN¬ 
TERESTS US; THAT IS. CERTAIN MANIFESTA¬ 
TIONS OF A WONDERFUL ART. AS THE 
TORCHES GLOW WE BID OUR FRIENDS 
THE ARTISTS AU REVOIR. THEY PASS ON 
TO OTHER FIELDS; THE GLORY OF THEIR 
ART REMAINS WITH US. 


T HE SUN does not always shine upon the back 
yard though the sunshine in the spirit glows 
perpetually. Hearts back there are always young. 
Now and then one hears a word which indicates that 
behind bright smiles and in spite of active bodies 
there hovers a dread of advancing age. The artist 
in the man knows that age will bring a falling off 
in form, and that, in the circus, is fatal not only to 

209 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


perfect accomplishment, which is the ideal, but to 
the capacity for making a living in the practice of an 
art which necessarily imposes limitations — all of 
which is terribly real. A performer who has 
reached the pinnacle dreads this falling off in form 
and dreads, too, the struggle which he must make to 
maintain his exalted position. He must ever be 
seeking for new turns which must be perfected, 
for youth is crowding closely and wishes to make for 
itself a place in the sun. The sun is shining in the 
back yard today, and I sit and gossip and talk shop 
with my friends between turns. I know their feel¬ 
ings not only toward the material but toward the 
spiritual side of their art. At some time, as it seems 
to me, I have touched the hem of their garments, 
and though no virtue seems to have gone out of 
them much has entered into me and I am happy in 
the knowledge that between us is mutual under¬ 
standing. I have this sense of understanding in my 
intercourse with workers in other of the arts; but 
in none other as with my friends in the back yard 
and under the dressing top do I sense such a flow 
of rhythmic power passing through spirit to spirit, 
from body to body. I feel like singing here. Some¬ 
how here I have a feeling of being in contact with 
fantastic reality. These men and women are weav¬ 
ing living patterns with their bodies. They are not 
only grasping the idea of the rhythmic interrelation 
210 


IN THE BACK YARD 


of time and space, they are spiritualizing it with 
their physical bodies. The pattern is living and 
vibrant. 

My friend the decorative artist also is filling 
space with pattern 5 but the pattern does not live, 
for the motivating idea was not to produce a spirit¬ 
ual pattern but — gracefully in the old times and 
gratingly and harshly in the modern day — to fill 
a space. Yes, many men of many minds; but who 
would fill space with lines if he could do it more 
powerfully and vitally with his body! And archi¬ 
tecture today is not living. It is copying itself and 
spending itself in patterns which group together in 
three-dimensional numbness. The space it fills 
more generally were better unfilled. This is es¬ 
pecially so of the modernistic expression, called in¬ 
ternational, and of architecture called functional, for 
these manifestations are the product of the worst 
kind of copying — the crossing of copied forms with 
other copied forms, none of which is national or 
racial in character or conception. Hence the form 
or pattern which issues cannot be international in 
complexion; it is only unnatural. For this brain¬ 
child is the offspring of the willful mating of, let 
us say, an American half-sister with a French half- 
brother; a Russian son with an Italian stepmother; 
of anybody with anybody or anything which may 
be expected to reproduce a form or pattern which 
211 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

someone, somewhere, has seen and considered inept 
enough to be perpetuated. We are doing the “ func¬ 
tional artists ” of the day little injustice — perhaps 
we are exalting them — in saying that their efforts 
generally are but demonstrations of technical skill 
on a par with the arm plange or the muscle grind. 
While not everything one sees under the big top 
classifies as art, yet, as we have seen, art is there to 
be enjoyed in the purity of its individualistic, na¬ 
tional and racial aspects. 

One might not at first glimpse conceive that art 
was in any manner involved in the spectacle of a man 
projected across the arena from the barrel of a mam¬ 
moth cannon. But the space-timing exhibited by 
the “ human projectile ” in taking the turn at the 
right time and place to land him safely in the net 
upon his shoulders is really a fine demonstration of 
the art of body control. One can hardly say that 
this flight of the body through the trackless air has 
that concomitant of beauty which distinguishes the 
swan-dive of Alfredo Codona from the top of the 
tent into the net; but quickness of vision and control 
of direction are similarly exercised at the end of 
both flights. The man who makes this particular 
cannon flight is an artist to the core, and this fact 
has its bearing on the act. Just after the World 
War, when art and engineering in Europe seemed 
212 


IN THE BACK YARD 


to be in the discard, two young men, Hugo and 
Bruno Zachini, the former a graduate of an art 
school, the latter an engineer, saw a cannon act in a 
Danish music hall. Hugo’s artistic sense told him 
the flight could be better done; Bruno’s mechanical 
sense told him the u gun ” could be improved upon. 
The two consulted with another brother, Edmund, 
a clever mechanical engineer, and the performance 
under discussion resulted. I sat one afternoon in 
the back yard of the “ Big One ” under the fly of 
the Zachini dressing van. A table was strewn with 
papers and magazines in half a dozen languages. 
The wife of one of the Zachinis was reading aloud 
in Italian from a volume of poetry. Hugo’s oil and 
water color sketches were stacked against a table leg. 
A figure was discernible in the process of being re¬ 
leased from a block of ebony. Form, sound, color 
enveloped me. In spite of the boom of the big gun 
I soon was to hear, I breathed the atmosphere of 
art as truly as if I had been in Alma-Tadema’s 
studio. 

The figure of a young woman is just slipping into 
the yard through the back door. The sunshine slid¬ 
ing over the big top strikes her shoulders, and my 
mind is drawn back to another sunny day in the back 
yard and something which had happened — no! 
something which had just missed happening. 

213 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 


In the first of at least two magazine articles 
written by La Zorado, of Les Zorados, double tra¬ 
peze artists, she tells of thrills and escapes on the 
part of the performer, for the benefit of the specta¬ 
tor who in many cases neither experiences the thrill 
nor senses the danger! I know one she did not tell. 
I was in the back yard of a circus on a sunny after¬ 
noon passing the time of day with friends among 
the “ kinkers,” as performers in general are styled 
by those who would affect a circus parlance * — 
the name probably having been suggested by the 
antics of the contortionist — when from the seem¬ 
ing gloom of the big top La Zorado appeared with 
a smile upon her face neither warm nor sunny, but 
drawn and tense. A slight shiver ran through her 
lithe body, which relaxed as she stated the cause of 
her shaken nerves. The Zorados at one end of the 
tent and the Rooneys at the other were giving acts 
which were counterparts, synchronizing in each 


* A columnist quoted in the Ringling-Barnutn Magazine, the 
program for the season of 1935, says: “ The Big Show personnel 
has long since abandoned old time circus slang. Performers are 
no longer ‘ kinkers,’ . . . elephants are not ‘ bulls,’ clowns are not 
‘ joeys,’ lions and tigers are not ‘ cats.’ The side shows are not ‘ kid 
shows,”’ etc., etc. I hope this reform wave will break lightly 
on the rock of circus tradition. There is too great a tendency nowa¬ 
days to make everything uniformly drab, to destroy individuality 
and eliminate the picturesque in favor of the formal — the conven¬ 
tional; in fact, to take the joy out of life. The circus today is a 
wholesome institution, its art is high and its slang, though limited 
in use, is picturesque. 


214 


IN THE BACK YARD 


turn of the act although the intervening tent poles 
prevented either team from seeing or communicat¬ 
ing with the other. At the conclusion of the act 
came the “ break away ” in which the female partner 
in each team is hanging by the legs — one hardly 
can say u lower limbs,” for they are upper in the act 
— on a bar on braided ropes in the hands of the 
male who is swinging by the legs on the upper and 
shorter of the double trapezes. The Rooneys’ bar 
was slightly more elevated than that of the Zorados; 
but u slightly ” in such a case might be a matter of 
life or death! The performers swing in a wide 
arc and under normal conditions when the braided 
line “ breaks away ” and the lady at the end shoots 
far out into space, her head at the center of the arc 
clears the floor of the ring by an uncomfortably 
short space, as it seems to the spectators. The per¬ 
formers have the length of the rope gauged and 
shoot out without trepidation. The Rooneys were 
the first to reach for the “ break away ” line and dis¬ 
covered to their horror, or at least to their con¬ 
sternation, that they had the Zorados’ line, which 
was the shorter, and that the Zorados on the lower 
bar had the longer line. Intercommunication, as 
I have said, was impossible and the Rooneys could 
only hope that their neighbors would discover the 
exchange and cut out the turn. The exchange was 
discovered, but not until La Zorado had shot far out 
215 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

into the air — and then she had to act quickly. She 
bent double as she swooped down and, climbing to 
the bar, barely missed the ring bank and grazed the 
floor. When she was released the smile that greeted 
the spectators rested upon drawn white lips. And 
on the face of little Jenny Rooney, who had swung 
far clear of the ring floor, was another and just such 
a smile. And, after all, it was not a ring accident 
which changed to the pen La Zorado’s chosen career 
at, or on, the bar. 

As I visioned a short time since the figure of the 
young girl as she slipped out of the gloom of the 
big top into the sunshine of the back yard, I recalled 
the occasion upon which I had as my guest on one 
of the big shows, “ both before and behind,” the 
president of a large and, one might be justified in 
saying, important state normal college. I had vis¬ 
ited the school to enjoy its art gallery and was struck 
with the multitude of bright young women who 
were aspiring to become teachers of the sciences, 
of literature and the languages, and of art. Evi¬ 
dently these vivid creatures were in the mind of the 
president as he watched the circus girls upon the 
ladders, upon their mounts on the hippodrome track 
and riding bareback in the rings. 

“ What is their I.Q.? ” he asked quite profession¬ 
ally. 

I know the jargon of callings other than my own 
216 


IN THE BACK YARD 


and I answered: “ About that of your senior girls, 
I imagine. We’ll go back and meet some of them 
and some of the stars and you may judge for your¬ 
self. They won’t be embarrassed, for they have met 
college presidents before.” 

Then I warned him not to expect more from 
these people than he would from a group of painters 
or sculptors or architects when encountering them 
the first time. There are ideas and ideals in the 
members of all these groups, but one should know 
their language. One might find a room full of 
deaf-mutes uninspiring did he not know the sign 
language or some other of their means of communi¬ 
cation. Indeed, under such conditions, the deaf- 
mutes might find the visitor uninspiring, even were 
he a college president. I did not make much head¬ 
way in the highest social surroundings in Athens, 
let me say, for I know nought of Greek} and yet I 
know their art, ancient and modern, and something 
of the social and economic problems with which 
Greece today is beset. 

“ Speak the language of these people,” said I to 
the college president, “and you will find them 
highly intelligent and interested in many phases of 
life. Among the clowns you will find a number who 
are conversant with Shakespeare and among others, 
performers and clowns, many who can converse — 
and have something to converse about — in several 
217 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

tongues. But if you know nothing of what deeply 
interests them you may have difficulty in drawing 
them out. You will feel as much an alien in their 
presence as I would in a gathering of physicists 
solving the equations of Einstein’s bent rays, or as 
many a person you know, at a studio tea. These 
circus people have just as much to interest the stu¬ 
dent of mental make-up, you call it psychology in 
your courses, as has any group of artists as a class. 
Individuals in each and all the classes rise to about 
the same height and on occasion the pinnacle reached 
is lofty.” 

While still in reminiscent and slightly philosophic 
mood and speaking not so much of an art as of 
conditions affecting its practice, it may not be entirely 
extraneous to relate another experience of mine in 
the back yard, especially as it serves to authenticate, 
discredit or rectify the record of an episode in circus 
history. There are two sides to every story; a fact 
which makes the writing of history dangerous for 
the historian who has access only to one. Having 
been in college and having participated in the event 
in so far as participation was possible, I have the 
college man’s side of the story; and having friends 
on the circus, I have learned the circus side as well. 
A visit of mine to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to inspect 
one of my buildings — that to house the student pub¬ 
lications — which was at that time under construc- 
218 



f 

MAY 1i^31 

THE AUTHOR.-C£.ARCHT-AM(hon)ARCH. D(hon>AA(AMATEUR ACROBAT) 
AT SEVENTY-SIX,THROWING A FOKWARD SOMERSAULT ONTHEMAT 
NETWIlfiHT 197POUNM. HUGHT 6 !n"-6ARESOLE5-FROM A PHOTOGRAPH: 


219 


SEE PAGES 47 & 221 































BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

tion, synchronized with the appearance of one of 
the major circuses in town. In the morning I was in 
the back yard of the lot upon which the circus was 
pitching its tents, chatting with Kinko, the albino 
clown, while awaiting the appearance of the Clarkes 
and the Hannefords who, with their families, were 
on the show, as were also several other of my circus 
friends. Said Kinko apropos of something or other, 
“ This is the university town, isn’t it? ” 

“ Yes,” I answered. 

“ This is where a number of students were killed 
and crippled when the seats were pulled out from 
under them. Must have been years ago. Ever 
hear of it? ” 

“ Yes, it’s a tradition,” said I. 
iC I don’t like it,” said Kinko, u it wasn’t right. 
There should have been some other way of han¬ 
dling the boys. They were just out for fun. The 
show had the law on its side, but I never thought it 
was right.” 

“ Is it a tradition or legend in the circus? ” 
a Yes, it is referred to now and then when we 
are in a college town. You said you had heard 
of it? ” 

I had been studying his face which had shown 
real concern for the fate of the boys. “ Sure thing,” 
I said. “I was there! I was in it! ” And he 
220 


IN THE BACK YARD 


wanted to know the story, which I told to him about 
as I am writing it down. 

“ Well,” I went on, “ I know the story is still 
alive, still extant, as Shakespeare would put it, for 
I read it again, I think in White Tops, in some circus 
article anyway, just a few weeks ago! It spoke of 
deaths and broken legs and arms; and that since 
that day no circus had played Ann Arbor in term 
time. For a fact it was more than forty years before 
Ann Arbor was favored with a first-class circus in 
term time, although fourteen years later a small 
outfit with c blood in its eye’ pitched on the out¬ 
skirts of the town. I’ll tell you of that later.” 

“ What was the first show? ” asked Kinko. 

u It was Forepaugh’s Circus and Menagerie with 
Adam at the front door in person. It was on a fine 
spring day in 18 76 — I was about finishing my fresh¬ 
man year. As you know I am a Circus Fan from 
’way back, and was something of an acrobat then as 
I am now, but that night my allegiance was divided. 
I had to see the show. I had to go with the boys. I 
could have gone in with the townies on my fa¬ 
ther’s passes — he was editor and publisher of a paper 

— but I went in on cut rates with the bunch. The 
freshmen were to sit in the top rows of the sections 
allotted to the boys. Nice place if the seats dropped 

— but they didn’t drop! ” 

221 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

An expression of surprise and relief passed over 
Kinko’s face. 

“ No,” I continued, “ they didn’t drop! You see 
it was like this. When the boys had filed into the 
menagerie top, each with a tin horn concealed un¬ 
der his coat, they stood in a bunch — oh! three, 
four, several hundred of them — awaiting some sig¬ 
nal. As they milled around and into the big top, 
Adam Forepaugh and the chief of police, old John¬ 
son, if I remember rightly, called two or three of 
the well known students aside. Among them was 
Ben T. Cable of Rock Island, Illinois, president of 
the senior class, a fine boy, popular, and one of the 
best boxers and sprinters in college. i Ben,’ said the 
chief, c I hope there’ll be no disturbance tonight. 
They say the boys are going to bust up the show 
— drown it out — put it out of business. I hope 
you don’t try! You boys are all in one block of 
seats detached from the others. The house is full 
and we don’t want trouble. But Mr. Forepaugh is 
prepared. He has sworn in his men as deputies 
and he has the law on his side. Let me show you . 9 

a It may have been Forepaugh who said this last, 
but it was the chief who did most of the talking as 
he knew the boys, many by name. However, I 
know that Adam gave the demonstration. He took 
the ‘ committee ’ out and under the wall of the big 
top and showed the ropes tied to the jacks under 
222 


IN THE BACK YARD 


the stringers; and the ropes were manned by razor- 
backs, canvas men and roughnecks by the score, 
each armed with a tent stake or a club of some sort 
and each itching to use it c in the name of the law! ’ ” 

I may interrupt the story long enough to tell 
you, my reader, what it was unnecessary to tell 
Kinko, that razor-backs are the men who handle the 
vans and trucks at the runs and would be upon the 
lot only for a special job such as this. They are 
no Sunday school children among them! They are 
seasoned! 

To continue: “ Ben saw all this and so did the 
others. He was no coward, but Ben felt that it 
was up to him to save the situation. He went into 
the big top and stood before the noisy crowd which 
filled the student sections. He raised his hand. 
Ben was rather a short, thickset chap, but very im¬ 
pressive, and there was comparative silence. ‘ Boys,* 
he said, ‘ this show is playing fair with us. The 
management is a good lot and will give us a good 
show. Let’s give them a break.’ Ben said some¬ 
thing like that — anyway the boys understood and 
only now and then was there a desultory c toot ’ 
during the whole evening! 

“ So you see,” said I to Kinko, “ how legends 
grow. The desire or intention was, in the telling, 
transformed into the deed. For it had been the in¬ 
tention, which would have been carried out had oc- 
223 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

casion offered, to pull the jacks from under, let¬ 
ting the benches down 5 and every student who 
showed fight would have been knocked on the head 
with a tent stake! ” 

That was the foundation of the tradition handed 
down in the circus. 

But there is more to the episode in the legend 
which has grown up in college circles. I would not 
say that there was not a bit of friction after the show 
between groups of students and members of the cir¬ 
cus crewj there was, but not enough to satisfy the 
exuberant freshmen who gave vent to their sup¬ 
pressed emotions by indulging in a vicious intraclass 
rush in which protesting or obnoxious classmates 
were “put over the fence” — and few of the 
class went home that night with a whole shirt or 
any! Student tradition has it that during this rush 
something else was transpiring. Tradition has it 
that bands of students, thwarted in their original 
purpose, gathered in the dark and spirited away 
wagon tongues and wheels to make movement to the 
next pitch difficult or impossible! Some of the boys 
shoved vans down into the Cat Hole, a filthy, deep 
puddle near the lot and the campus 5 others ran 
ahead and cut the supports of the bridge over a 
creek down Ypsilanti way and the elephants broke 
through. This hampered the progress of the show, 
224 


IN THE BACK YARD 


for the elephants had to be rescued and the bridge 
mended. But worst of all for the circus, as the leg¬ 
end goes, when it reached the new lot late in the 
morning the canvas was found to be unusable, for 
the pharmacy students had broken into the chemical 
laboratory and had swiped all they could find of 
what they called H2SO4, but known to anyone but 
a pharmic as sulphuric acid, and poured it on the 
bundled canvas and let the percolating fluid do its 
dirty work. u Had you heard that part of it? ” 
I asked Kinko; and it was news to him, as I imagine 
it would be even to the circus people who were 
on the show that night! 

I told Kinko not to waste his sympathy on the 
boys, as I wasn’t wasting any on the show, for in 
reality no boys were hurt except in their feelings 
and no vans were overturned, no elephants stalled 
nor was canvas eaten by acid. The stories arose as 
the result of a very natural psychological reaction $ 
the circus men would have liked to get in on the 
boys and in their imagination did, while the boys 
would have liked some compensation for thwarted 
intentions and took it out in imagining things. Most 
of the college yarn came from the lips of the most 
atrocious prevaricator in school at the time, a fresh¬ 
man who was too timid to participate in the rush 
and who, when pressed for a reason for his absence, 
225 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

asserted his leadership in all the fell deeds of that 
night, which later wove themselves into a student 
legend. 

I asked Kinko,“ How comes the circus here in Ann 
Arbor even during summer school term, for there 
are four times as many students in town today as 
there were then! ” I verified my statement later and 
found that there were four thousand, three hundred 
and twenty-six students in town at that time for 
the summer session and there were but one thou¬ 
sand and sixty-nine in all the university on that 
memorable spring night in 1876 when all these 
dire things — didn’t happen! But later, when we 
saw hundreds of mild-mannered schoolteachers of 
both sexes and the hundreds on hundreds of beauti¬ 
ful, happy children at the matinee performance, 
we knew the answer j and I wondered if times had 
deteriorated, as certainly they had changed, since 
my freshman year when a bunch of restless and un¬ 
easy students were listening for the dread call, 
“ Hey! Rube! ” which luckily did not sound. 

In the foregoing one can see history in the un¬ 
making! But writers of the circus are bound to 
have the episode occur somewhere and recently in 
a circus book I found the scene laid at the University 
of Missouri. The University of Illinois has cham¬ 
pions who lay claim to the honor of having had her 
— their Alma Mater — involved in a “Hey, 
226 


IN THE BACK YARD 


Rube!” affair! All of which would seem to indi¬ 
cate that a big rumpus or fracas or, as the circus 
people have it, “clem,” in which students were 
killed or hurt, had occurred at no time, nowhere — 
nowhere but in the vivid imagination of circus men 
or students who had been seeing things at night! 

As for the incident which occurred fourteen years 
after the episode from which this tradition sprouted, 
it is hardly of enough importance to mention and 
would never have been heard of beyond the lot 
had not the yellow journals of the Michigan me¬ 
tropolis, then as now antagonistic to the university 
and given to unscrupulous exaggerations in record¬ 
ing student activities, carried scarehead stories the 
next day. A small circus, manned by toughs, 
showed the town on May 28, 1890. The outfit 
seemed bent on trouble, although students were not 
present in large numbers nor by concerted action. 
The roughnecks on the show attacked the crowd 
with clubs as it was dispersing after the night per¬ 
formance. The circus men didn’t know the differ¬ 
ence between a “ stude ” and a farmer’s wife and 
struck out indiscriminately, injuring several citizens 
who did not fight back. If this particular circus 
had it in mind to avenge the “ atrocity ” of four¬ 
teen years previous, it failed and simply scored 
another sordid entry on the unsavory list of circus 
clems. 


227 


BIG TOP RHYTHMS 

So in the sunshine in the back yard I talked of 
the olden days with my friend, the albino clown. 
But while the sun is shining now, it has been known 
to rain in the back yard, all over the lot, and over 
the surrounding countryside. I walked, at the 
lunch hour, on a pitch on the banks of the Kaw, 
lengthwise of the big top, out to the cookhouse in 
the only possible manner to avoid becoming inextri¬ 
cably mired5 that is by stepping into holes into which 
the elephants with their feet had crushed tons of 
straw as they had tried to place the vans loaded with 
stringers, jacks and planks. In few of the holes 
only had the water risen, so I made my journey 
lunchward dry shod. A little later, while I was 
chatting in the dressing top, the lot boss entered 
and called out, a Pack up. No show today.” On 
that lot, after thirty-six hours of intensive struggle 
in Missouri mud, the show yielded to the inevitable 
and lost four consecutive performances. In such 
conditions does the spiritual sometimes fail of ma¬ 
terialization! Before we left the lot the sun was 
shining! But too late, the damage was done. 

Throughout this period in which we have been 
studying an art in its natural habitat, so to speak, 
under the big top and in the back yard, the sun has 
shone continuously and smilingly, and the continu¬ 
ity ceases for us and the smile slowly fades only as 
228 


IN THE BACK YARD 


his majesty of the heavens sinks to rest in his West¬ 
ern bed canopied in crimson, green and gold. 
Torches begin to glow here and there, a wagon starts 
off in the direction of the runs and we know that 
another delectable day is drawing to a close. The 
stars in the firmament are twinkling their brightest, 
though they are not aware of it or of the effect they 
are producing on us here below. The stars under 
the big top are throwing their souls into their work, 
quite conscious from the applause which greets their 
efforts that they are producing an effect, and equally 
conscious, if one should care to ask them, that the 
real idealism in their performance, the real spirit 
of beauty which animates them and urges to su¬ 
preme endeavor, has not entered into the conscious¬ 
ness of the mighty throng. Only now and then one, 
only you, my dear reader, and I, can look behind 
that wonderful technique, that lovely manifestation 
of art, and see the spirit of beauty which animates the 
form. 


229 





T he glorious pageant has faded; and 

WHILE THESE, OUR ACTORS, WERE NOT 
WHOLLY SPIRIT, NEITHER WERE THEY WHOLLY 
MATTER. THAT WHICH WAS MATERIAL RE¬ 
SPONDED EAGERLY AND LOVINGLY TO SPIRITUAL 
IMPULSES AND BEFORE OUR EYES MADE THE MA¬ 
TERIAL DEEPLY SPIRITUAL EACH PARTICULAR 
EVANESCENT AND BEAUTIFUL EXPRESSION OF 
THEIR ART MAY OF ITSELF VANISH INTO AIR— 
INTO THIN AIR; BUT THESE OUR ACTORS RE¬ 
MAIN TO AWAKEN WITHIN US AGAIN, AND YET 
AGAIN. ECSTATIC THRILLS AND TO REASSURE US 
THAT WE ARE NOT ANIMATED CLODS, BUT THAT 
TRULY “WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE 
MADE ON.” AND LIKE OUR ACTORS MAY WE 
LIVE OUR DREAM LIFE JOYOUSLY AND MAY THAT 
UFE BE ROUNDED WITH A DREAMLESS SLEEP. 










































































